Parents Talk: But So Does TV

How much TV is too much? The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), says kids under two should watch nada, nothing.

I did a bit of digging after reading Dawn Mooney's column, "," and found the same stats we've all heard -- which have become so familiar that I hear, agree and go looking for where I put the remote.

So I'll leave you with a few tidbits I hadn't read so many times that I was inoculated.

Children spend more time watching television than any activity other than sleep, according to an A.C. Nielson study.

That bothered me, but when I read the AAP's following statement and what came after it, I got vertigo: "Family is the most important influence a child's life, but television is not far behind."

Does that not rip the toenails right off your feet? The next sentence read, "Television can inform, entertain, and teach us. However, some of what TV teaches may not be the things you want your child to learn." Okay, now I agree, but after the first statement, I was waiting for an operatic scream.

I couldn't take -- television can inform entertain and teach us -- coming right after television's influence is not far behind family's.

Hey the AAP does great work, no knocking them, but we parents, aunts and grandparents could afford to be more shocked when the kids we love sit zombie-like in front of a screen for hours every day.

So here's this week's question -- in your family if you are number one, how far behind is TV?

Now I'm not trying to get on the soap box, because I also read that by the time we're 70, the average person has spent  five to 10 years watching TV. Now I watch less than the average viewer, but even if I'm closer to the five-years mark, that's more than enough time to write that novel I've been trying to finish, learn French or do more walking around the Emerald City -- sorry Utopians, I know, I know, but sometimes I just like Emerald City.

Thankfully "American Idol" is finished for the season. Although it loosened its grip on me once James Durbin was gone, it still reeled me in for the finale. Au revoir Idol.