But, surprisingly perhaps, whether our children should have been granted the permission to watch TV has always been a very sensitive topic in our conversations - even much much before that Leo was born, when, as an entertainment, we did speculate on how we would have liked to educate our children...
Mathilde, ‘frau’ Mathilde, believed that TV makes babies stupid, and therefore, no, we should have not allowed our children to watch TV. And anyway, we didn’t even have a television, so why bother?
My position has always been more open, as I believe that TV is just a tool, neither good nor bad in itself. What makes TV good or bad was in my opinion the use of it, and therefore which programs we select, and how much TV we allow our children to watch per day.
And precisely the ‘how much TV per day’ had become the main issue in our conversations. And so, when, in response to Mathilde who was repeatedly asking ‘so, what would be in your opinion the right amount of TV per day for a baby’ I absently responded ‘I don’t know… 2 hours?’ - that answer closed that topic of conversation forever…
But perhaps the fact that we recently experienced the benefits of TV, i.e. the fact that we had thirty minutes to enjoy a quiet dinner, would make this topic newly open for discussion…