We had a lovely, lovely 12 days in Ireland, and one of the lovely-factors was that TV was virtually absent. Having no background noise calmed me, and having very little idea what was going on in the world was restful. Most importantly, I was thrilled to see my children having so much fun with little screen dependence.

But, alas, we returned to our real world. And TV came back with a vengeance. After two full days of letting TV have its way with our boys, we laid down the parental boom.…

We recently ran into one of Alex’s preschool buddies and his mom at Target. Alex couldn’t resist announcing to his friend that he was buying a Ben 10 toy. “Ooh,” the mom said to him, “you’re lucky. My kids don’t get to watch that show.” (Translation: “We’re more responsible about limits than in your house.”) And I doubt my protest, “Oh, he hardly ever watches it. I don’t even know what channel it’s on,” rang true. For the uninitiated, Ben 10 is on Cartoon Network and

…or maybe we should start in the family room:

“Today, watching television often involves fighting, violence and foul language. And that’s just deciding who’s going to hold the remote control.” – Donna Gephart

If you watched Sesame Street as a child and remain unscathed, you can breathe a sigh of relief. I mention this because a recently released DVD of the first episodes of the ground-breaking PBS show for preschoolers comes with this warning:  “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” 

Apparently, some characters on The Street in those days (1969) modeled behavior that today is considered inappropriate for preschool TV. For example, the original Oscar…

The story I crafted of my own childhood did not include much TV. After all, there were just three channels then [I tell myself], and most households only had one TV [boring black and white]. So, when I considered my childhood, I pictured myself watching TV only occasionally, maybe with my whole family camped around the set to see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan or a special edition of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.

Today, I learned my TV history is revisionist. I was trying to remember which shows were on when I was…

I admit it: I suffer from TV shame. It’s the feeling that descends when my wonderful children, acting independently in the world, reveal that they watch [what I believe is] too much TV. Some examples:

• Four-year-old Alex utters something clever on Tuesday, and I smile to myself, basking in his brilliance. Then on Wednesday I hear SpongeBob utter the very same sentence.
• At the Book Fair, my children pick out two categories of books: those based on Nick Jr. characters, and encyclopedias of cheat codes. I scurry to hide

…