When giving this advice to parents, I always add that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that parents limit all "screen time"-TV, movies, video games, and computer games-to a total of one to two hours a day for children age two and over. For children under the age of two, the Academy recommends no screen time at all. The AAP (which is now beginning to sound like an ally of the Tiger Mother) also recommends that parents should not put a TV in their child's bedroom. The pediatricians who make these recommendations are concerned that violent shows can contribute to aggressive behavior and distractedness in children, and might even cause trauma. As most of us realize from our own experience, classic children's movies like Bambi can be terrifying to a four-year-old.

Sometimes it helps to tell parents that I practice what I preach. For many years while my children were growing up, I limited their TV-watching to one hour of PBS a day. When young, they accepted this without protest. It helped that our next-door-neighbors chose to have no television set at all. It was a great treat for the neighbor kids to come over to our house to watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood on our tiny TV set. But by the time my kids got to middle school, they began to protest that all their friends watched commercial television. My husband and I were nothing short of the meanest parents in town for preventing them from watching the shows that their friends did. Eventually, they learned to re-position our old fashioned satellite dish to commercial channels when we were not home. Charmed by their ingenuity, we grudgingly tolerated Beverly Hills 90210.

Now that my children are having children of their own, the tables are turned. What goes around comes around. Does my son allow his own little son to watch television? Not a chance! He and his wife have decided not to have TV in their home. Now who are the meanest parents in town?