8 Ways to Control Your Child

Reprinted with permission from Beyond Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media published by the Center for Media Literacy, Los Angeles.
  1. Set guidelines about what is appropriate viewing in your family. Apply guidelines to all media: TV, cartoons, videos, movies, videogames, magazines and comic books.
  2. Help children select programs within your family's guidelines. Seek to add positive programs while limiting negative ones.
  3. Be aware of what children are watching outside your home. Communicate your standards to neighbors, grandparents, babysitters and others who may care for your child or children. Ask for their cooperation in limiting violent viewing.
  4. Be a good role model when making your own viewing selections.
  5. Periodically watch TV with children to share their experience of TV and to learn more about what they do and don't understand about what they see and hear.
  6. Use a VCR to tape appropriate entertainment for children to watch alone.
  7. Encourage children to become involved in a variety of leisure activities other than TV, videos and videogames.
  8. Talk about TV management with other parents; share tips and provide support for one another; challenge those who are still apathetic.