CHILDREN AND TV

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30632, 24 December 1964, Page 12

CHILDREN AND TV

Restrictions Deplored

The biggest error parents could make over television was to restrict their children’s viewing, because this would only make it more attractive to them, said Mr D. Barrett, of South Laguna, California, yesterday. For the last five years Mr Barrett has run a television translator system which carries programmes from 11 television chanels into his area. Mr Barrett recently sold it to a larger company. Mr Barrett said his three children were allowed to watch programmes without restraint. He calculated that they might have seen about 400 murders every week, but they were not showing signs of anti-social behaviour, he said. “There were no physically bad effects either,” he said. 'The children rapidly became satiated with trivia.” Enumerating the benefits of television, Mr Barrett said it brought new life to what adults regarded as ordinary facets of living and which were new and exciting to children. “Television is the best baby-sitter and pacifier there is,” he said. Mr Barrett said that reading did suffer, but television stimulated intellectual curiosity, which would bring children back to books.