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Is watching football “family time” with the kids?
We just did a news piece on a study showing that dads with boys tend to spend more time with their kids than dads who only have girls. That’s a sad bit of news, since girls really need daddy time as well. But I don’t want to get off on that tangent. The second part of the story went on to say that this extra “boy time” was spent watching TV together. So, is watching TV really quality time with the kids, or is it something we do and rationalize that at least they were in the room in while you were enjoying the big game, or worse, the most recent episode of CSI.
I’m of two minds about this because my now 7 year old discovered Pro Football two seasons ago when the Vikings were making a run for the playoffs and as a native Minnesotan, I became a fan again for two or three games. My son went on to become a Saint fan, but that’s another story. That season, last season, and now this season, we’ve watched a lot of football. We’ve made Monday night into pizza night and we’ve shelved a lot of Sunday afternoon activities so we can watch some ball. Anyone who watches football as a group activity knows it’s not a passive endeavor. It’s not like golf. If your heart isn’t pumping and you’re not cheering of someone, you might as well turn it off. My son now knows a lot of the lingo and, while he isn’t yet talking trash, he does some color commentary along the way.
At the same time, my wife started watching “White Collar” with our daughter late last summer. The show, positively rated for tweens, is more passive entertainment as is typical of weekday TV fare. You watch “together,” laugh “together,” but it’s not quite participatory until the debriefs during commercials or after the show. They enjoy it immensely, however.
You can tell already what my opinion is on the difference between the two types of TV as a family activity.
We don’t watch a lot of TV at home, and during the school year, the rule is no TV or video games during the week, though that rule is broken from time to time when homework is done and piano practice has been accomplished and parents are also looking for a break. It’s in these times, that I’d prefer to break out a board game or even play family Wii together. But is TV a good activity for a family? Is it a bonding event?
My perspective, despite a recent GreatDad news piece on TV as a nurturing tool, is “no.” In a general sense, spending time together doing something is “good.” You do remember peaceful scenes of the family together eating popcorn. However, rare are memories of the night in 1983 when you all watched that one episode of “St. Elsewhere.” TV just isn’t that memorable, except when it’s a news event that brings us all together in a common experience. I watched TV all day on 9/11 and was very glad I had family around to do it with – they are part of my 9/11 memory.
Are there exceptions to this? Yes, of course. I remember watching Marx Brothers movies with my kids, and expect that they will remember them as well. I remember watching “Casablanca” with my daughter because we still quote lines and reference it together. The “classics,” whatever they are, will still be classics and do transcend regular TV watching. Will people care 10 years from now what was on “ER,” or how “Lost” or “Desperate Housewives” took over our lives for brief moments in time. I doubt it.
But back to sports. Is football good time spent with your son? Likely not as good as actually tossing him one in the backyard for an hour, but compared to a lot of other things on TV, it’s perhaps a hair better than most.
What do you think?
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Review: Griffin Beacon for iPhone
As a lazy dad who believes that the invention of the remote control is truly proof of God’s existence and New Testament beneficence, we had to try the Griffin Beacon. Griffin Beacon, using technology from Dijit, turns your iPhone or iPad into a universal remote control.
This is a trick that is harder than you might imagine. Griffin had to create a piece of hardware that sits in your living room and needs to pair with your phone over Bluetooth. The Beacon has all major hardware codes within it, allowing your phone to talk to the DVD player, PVR, TV, Cable box without an IR transmitter.
In practice, the Beacon works pretty well, though you might not want to throw out your main remote quite yet. In our experience, we found it a bit cumbersome on the small iPhone screen and while we liked having a universal remote, we gravitated back to our simple Comcast remote for ease of use.
Additionally, sexy features like a functionality to view our Netflix queue, still don’t yet integrate with actually viewing movies on the device or controlling the Netflix feature on our devices.
Still, Griffin is onto something here with their partner app developer, Dijit. Clearly, this app gives us all a taste of Dijit technology is in development and future updates will make the app far stronger, especially when it runs on iPad with more screen space.
The pros:
Set up after you get the Bluetooth pairing down is very intuitive, making adding components a snap
Online program guide is good and future iterations will allow complete integration with social media. This is just the beginning for Dijit and Griffin.
The cons:
You’ve got one more little device (the Beacon) on your coffee table, and while unobtrusive, it’s another piece of clutter
The Beacon uses batteries which will need to be replaced under heavy use
You have to click the Beacon if you change devices, say to your wife’s phone or to the iPad
Our recommendation: Postpone purchase until you download the app and see what you are actually getting since the sizzle may pull you in before you understand the current limits. Even so, we think this technology has legs for the near future.
Griffin Beacon Specs
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Dads beware: Your couch may be killing you
This is really bad news for couch potatoes, as well as the rest of us who have desk jobs, but still cram in workouts to make sure we stay fit and healthy. Now studies show that it’s all for nought, and not even the most dedicated among us are immune to the negative affects of a sedentary lifestyle. This is more reason to get out and do things with your kids as an ongoing habit, and to teach them never to get into the TV habit. This is easier said than done. As for me, it sounds like I can just about hang it up, after a career mostly sitting at a desk and in front of a screen, especially if the workouts don’t make a difference.
The latest findings, published this week in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicate that the amount of leisure time spent sitting in front of a screen can have such an overwhelming, seemingly irreparable impact on one’s health that physical activity doesn’t produce much benefit.
The study followed 4,512 middle-aged Scottish men for a little more than four years on average. It found that those who said they spent two or more leisure hours a day sitting in front of a screen were at double the risk of a heart attack or other cardiac event compared with those who watched less. Those who spent four or more hours of recreational time in front of a screen were 50 percent more likely to die of any cause. It didn’t matter whether the men were physically active for several hours a week — exercise didn’t mitigate the risk associated with the high amount of sedentary screen time.
The study is not the first to suggest that sedentary activities like television viewing may be harmful. A study last year found that men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars were more likely to die of heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less, even if they exercised. And a 2009 study reported that young children who watch one and a half to five and a half hours of TV a day have higher blood pressure readings than those who watch less than half an hour, even if they are thin and physically active.
[From Inactivity Is Harmful, Even With Trips to the Gym - NYTimes.com]
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A Week With My Father – new show on father/son reunions (Video)
Giacaomo Knox is launching a new web show and trying to sell the pilot for A Week With My Father, a new show that explores reunions between dads and sons. It’s an interesting idea, and underscores the importance of the father/child bond.
The first episode features Knox reuniting with his father after 33 years apart. The next episode, already in the Development stage, will reunite a former NBA great who came back from a stroke, and his father.
Check it out in this excerpt and the whole show at: aweekwithmyfather.com.
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Baby, meet dog. Dog, meet baby. It’s hard not to smile at this baby video.
Okay, I was a sucker for the Bonnie Hunt Show. It was pretty funny, but also had a lot of heartwarming stuff that felt kind of true three or four years ago when we were parents of very little kids. This video, as she says in the intro, doesn’t contain anything bizarre or amazing, but if you’ve had a baby or even if you just are human, it’s hard not to smile when you see it.
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