The other day, my wife and I – needing a break — picked two random people off the street and asked if they could babysit our three children for 30 minutes. We thought they’d charge a lot on such a short notice, but, believe it or not, they did it for free. Well, sort of. They wanted to show our kids a few products they were selling, and they also wanted to tell them a bunch of things we disagreed with. It sounded crazy, but, hey, they’d done this before, and, besides, they said, all the parents were doing it.

Of course, I made all of that up.

But don’t we do this very thing every time we let our children watch a television program we know little about? It’s essentially random people with (too often) an unbiblical worldview trying to sell our children something they don’t need. No part of that is good.

My family does have a television in our house, and we do let our oldest (who is 5) watch it, but the TV is not on all the time. In fact, when he’s awake, it’s mostly off. He gets to watch some educational shows, a tad-bit of simply fun shows, and from time to time a show his Mommy and Daddy enjoy. But he’s under the national average for TV viewing – children ages 2-5 spend an average of 32 hours a week in front of the tube, according to Nielsen. His twin sister and brother (who are 1) don’t get to watch TV at all.

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