Cine Kids - Family TV Time

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A new CineTV format: Cine Kids

Hello dear CineTV community members, how is your weekend going so far? I hope all is going well and that you may have a wonderful weekend with your family/loved ones! I want to give an introduction about the new format called "Cine Kids" that you can expect every Friday from next week. I have thought long and hard about a new blog post for the CineTV account and sometimes ideas need a little time to settle in and brew a little longer, as it was the case with this one.

I had to take some time to make sure I was going to start a series of posts that I can relate to and something that can be used for a longer period of time if all goes well. Preferably something where I can also choose to work out new ideas ahead of the deadline. The one thing that kept coming back in my brainstorm sessions was something with "Kids and Cine". Why? I have a daughter so I can relate to the topic and I assume this will be the case for many years to come as well.

The question was, what will I write about exactly? I personally like to keep things a little open for creative inspiration that can pop up out of nowhere so I was not looking to start a blog post that shares the latest tv shows or kids movies every week over and over again. I like to do so, but less frequent. I yet have to decide on that exactly, you will find out soon enough!

All things Cine and Kids related

My end verdict after a lot of brainstorming was that I will write about something else related to kids and Cine every week. Today it can be a blog post about new movie releases for children, while next week I may compare children's television from the past with the current offer on Netflix. I also have a blog post in mind about the psychology behind children's TV shows as well as the algorithms your child faces when browsing on Youtube. Another thing that interests me is digging into different cultures and what children watch there compared to other parts of the world. I hope I can find some interesting material along the way, I will aim to surprise the readers with a new topic every week.

Today I will keep it simple though and want to share with you how our family spends our tv time. Of course I'd love to read your thoughts about the topic in the comments and the more someone wishes to share about their personal situation, the better. I'd like to read your feedback and am open for the discussion even if we disagree on things.

TV time in our family

During the week, both of us work mostly and we rarely sit behind the tv during the office hours, it happens, but it's rare. This means that when it's 2 PM and our daughter finishes school, she is allowed to have a little tv time. I'm quite strict about it nowadays as I noticed she easily falls into a routine of only consuming and with that a behavioral change is inevitable, unfortunately. To avoid this, I motivate her to create things after an hour tv and usually this works well.

I don't know about your weekends but at our home, we try to go out at least one of the two days during the weekend. Currently that doesn't mean big daytrips, but usually have a drink somewhere and the rest of the weekend there will always be several hours of family tv time.

Although we have the agreement here that during the weekends, it's mommy and daddy tv time, it always comes down to finding something for all of us (or those that want to) watch during the day until our daughter goes to bed whenever we have the tv on. I try to avoid having it on for too many hours (also during the weekends).

The only thing that will not happen when it's weekend is her watching her beloved cartoons while we are also sitting on the couch. We don't mind this during weekdays if we are working but don't allow it during the weekends. This is also the result of us being a little to easy on her while we were prepping our emigration last year and had our hands full some days to get things done.

Educational TV

But as these aren't available all the time, or we aren't in the mood to watch the same thing all the time during the weekends, we often find something that we all enjoy watching as well as educational. We have noticed that our daughter is very receptible for this and I think it's a missed opportunity not to use part of the tv time for educational purposes.

The weekend is only halfway done now and I can say that today there was not that much TV time for us. Both of us worked part of the day and our daughter was coloring and later watched Big Brother with us before she went to bed because she snuggled up under a blanket the last hour. That's my favorite part of us watching something on TV together, snuggling up under a blanket.

What do you do with your TV time in your family? Any schedule, rules etc? Please feel free to share it in a comment below.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!