My two boys, now eight and ten, enjoy watching television while I prepare dinner. They especially love being in charge of the remote, like most boys do. In the past, they would stumble across programming that was unsuitable, and I would find myself constantly having to check in on them or taking the remote from them.
As a parent, we feel certain responsibilities to protect our children. There are so many things you do not want your child to be witness to, but living a busy, on-the-go lifestyle, it is hard to keep up with all that children see and hear. There are many things on television that I just do not want my boys to see. They are too young to witness acts of violence, see nudity, and they are too impressionable to hear indecent language. Luckily for us, there are parental controls for television. Today, most cable and satellite companies are offering the ability to control what your children watch. I have parental controls set up for my two boys, and I feel at ease handing the remote control over to them. So, if you find that you are frustrated with all of the violence, language, and nudity on television, there are options for you to try.
There are all sorts of new advanced parental controls that you can use to monitor and limit what your children tune into on television. I found the easiest tool is the one provided by your television program provider. With these controls, you have plenty of options. I like that I can block television shows based on the levels of language, nudity, violence, and the ratings. You can also block specific channels. If you wanted to black the FX channel, you would set up the control, and the channel would not even appear as an option in the menu screen. You can even block specific channels based on the time of day.
These controls are very user-friendly. I even figured out how to eliminate the “bad” channels without the help of my husband.
Other tools to block and monitor television channels are shows are available. For instance, the V-Chip and different software-like applications. I found these to be wither too difficult to set up, or lacking in the options that I was looking for.
Now, my boys and I are all happy. They get to be “in charge” of the remote, and I get the peace of mind knowing that they are protected from watching television shows that are unsuitable. I highly suggest talking to your television program provider for more information on parental controls. I wouldn’t have a television without controls now.
Paisley Downing is an on-the-go mother of two boys, eight and ten. She loves writing and sharing ideas on parenting, like, books for kids, DirectSatTV for kids, and parental controls.
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