Looking for Kid-Friendly Television? Tivo Some Retro Shows!
Categories: Kids 8-11, Fun & Activities
In the summer, my kids have a lot of freedom to play outside and generate their own fun. In the winter, however, the bitter cold (it's almost zero degrees today in northern Wisconsin!) means a lot of time spent indoors. To entertain themselves, my kids play dress up, knit, paint, color, play board games, and make things out of play dough, modeling clay and scraps of felt, cardboard, pipe cleaners, and egg cartons that I keep in a box in the basement. Sometimes, though, they just want to watch a movie or catch a show on television.
These days, with all the great movie review websites for parents (my personal favorite is kidsinmind.com) it's quite easy to see what you're getting when you rent a film for your kids. Television, however, is a different matter. Gone are the days when parents could trust that a television show geared for kids or families would necessarily be wholesome. That's a real bummer for me because I can't always be in the room monitoring whether every story line on a show is age-appropriate. My solution? To Tivo shows that I know and trust – namely, the shows I grew up with, like The Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver, The Beverly Hillbillies and Gilligan's Island. Oh, they also love The Smurfs.
I have been amazed by just how much my kids love these shows. Till I watched a few with them, I had forgotten how perfectly fun the jokes and plots lines were for kids (Bobby and Cindy want to break the see-saw world record!). My kids are also surprisingly unfazed by the retro fashion and furnishings and it's even been the catalyst for some interesting conversations about the way things were "in the olden day " (their words, not mine!).
Before long, it will be warm again and I can give them the age-old motherly command to "Go outside and play!" Till then, I feel good about letting them take in some clean entertainment and answering some unexpected questions like, "What does groovy mean?"
Do you use your Tivo to monitor what your kids are watching? What shows are you recording for kid-friendly viewing?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jo 3-03-2009 @ 11:57AM
Some other "oldies but goodies" that my daughter loves to watch are, "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Waltons"...some may call them corny, but they are entertaining, wholesome, and yes, frequently tear jerkers at times...great family values are pretty much timeless. The Hallmark Channel features them daily, but you can also buy the seasons on discs. As far as classic cartoons, The Flintstones and The Jetsons are loved by this generation as much as they were by ours...you can find their DVD's in almost any department store...the modern "family" sitcoms and cartoons of this generation just can't hold a candle to these, or the classics you mentioned!
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ttupper 3-03-2009 @ 4:28PM
Little House on The Prairie is a great one, I grew watching that and my kids watch it as well. We own the DVDs.
I most definitly TiVo shows so that I can control what the kids watch. As a matter of fact we never watch "live" tv at all in the past few years. My reason for doing this is not only to control what my kids watch but I limit my kids tv time from the 12 year old to the 1 year old and so they will almost always miss their favorite shows. So we TiVo them and they get to watch them when they are allowed tv time. Plus for my husband and I we rarely get time to watch tv with 4 kids, TiVo is the only way we are able to watch any at all.
To me,TiVo or TiVo type devices are valuable!
cookingfordads 3-04-2009 @ 12:06AM
We've found a bunch of DVD's of these old shows in the dollar section in Target. You get about 6 or 7 episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies or Leave it to Beaver for a dollar. How great is that? Great article as always.
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coleman.christina 3-03-2009 @ 8:16PM
I don't have children just yet, but I have the same mindset about Tivo-ing classic tv. Unfortunately, a lot of the old classic cartoons seem to be lacking, but shows like The Waltons and The Cosby Show are definitely going to be around for my kid to watch. I can't think of anything better than the Cosby Show; it promotes family values and education, and Bill Cosby has to be one of the funniest men ever.
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Sifrina 3-03-2009 @ 9:47PM
I kind of OD'd on the Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, and Leave it to Beaver when I was young, so I can't stand these shows now. I should probably show my son these so he understands what the 70s were but to me these shows are just so fake and staged to look so perfect when in reality the actors' lives were far from it.
We do TiVo some stuff but then forget to watch it or get too busy (it's a little warmer here). One thing I've noticed is that very lately my 6 1/2 year old has been watching some of his pre school favorites - Dora, Kipper and Wow Wow Wubbzy - which is fine with me!
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Michelle 3-04-2009 @ 1:26AM
This is topic is so true to our family right now. I also live in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, and for the past few months we have been DVR'ing Little House on the Prairie. When the kids watch it in the evenings after homework is done, my husband and I find ourselves enjoying it so much too. Such a great show about family values and being kind to others. Coincidentally, my daughter received the Little House house books for her birthday, the same ones I used to read when I was a kid. And because of our renewed interest in the show, this summer we also plan to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum and the Little House wayside, where there stands a replica of a cabin on the plot where Laura Ingalls was born. (This is located in Pepin, Wisconsin and we plan on visiting when we take a road trip this summer on the Great River Road, which runs along the Mississippi River. We plan on going up the WI side and back down the MN side (or vice versa). Rachel, this might be a nice trip for your family too, if you haven't gone there already!).
The kids also go crazy over reruns of the Brady Bunch and America's Funniest Home Videos. Fun stuff.
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Chere 3-05-2009 @ 9:07AM
You are so right Rachel. I loved the shows from the past. My daughter is 3 so I try to keep her away from the tv, we do a lot of what you had mentioned (painting, crafting, reading, etc. ) But sometimes she wants to watch tv. I let her watch Dora and Mickey Mouse, but some of the cartoons are really inappropriate. Funny thing is the other day, I was cleaning my bedroom and Anya was with her dad, I had the tv on and ened up watching Leave it to Beaver, and my thought after it was over was wow, I wish there were more shows like this. The episode taught a great lesson for both the Beaver and his parents. Some will say those shows are a bit hokie but I still say some of the oldies are always going to be goodies!
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lama 3-09-2009 @ 1:50PM
We do this all the time! My 9 year old son LOVES Leave it the Beaver and Andy Griffith. He's also started watching The Cosby Show. I don't know how I'd manage without TiVo. I have to admit, with 4 children ages 2 1/2 to 9 and an attorney-husband with terrible work hours, the children watch more TV than I'd like at various times -- getting through homework with the older two, getting the younger two to bed etc. I like knowing that they are limited in their choices -- they don't kow the difference however -- they think they have all the choices in the world with the TiVo menu and I don't have to worry when I'm running around and dividing my time.
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