Excerpted from Chapter Nine of The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease (Penguin, 2006, 6th edition). For a list of all topics covered here and in the print edition see Chapter Nine question list.

CHAPTER 9: TV, Audio, & Technology—
     Hurting or Helping Literacy?—continued

Can't you see how hard it is to monitor or limit children's TV or gaming hours?

As a matter of fact, it's never been easier to control it! The same technology that has flooded the airwaves with 1,352 weekly hours of children's programming (up from 27 hours in 1965) now allows us to control it, and I don’t mean that facetiously. Having had to play the TV policeman in our house, I know the pain (more on that later in this chapter). So here's something to ease the pain, with side effects that are nothing but wonderful. It's called Time-Scout Monitor.

This is a commercial product (less than $100) that limits how much time family members can spend on TV, videos, Play Station, or computers. It would have made my life as a parent a lot easier thirty-five years ago.

The card performs like a debit card—except it uses TV or computer minutes
instead of money.

About the size of aWalkman, it comes with three account cards on which the parent loads time, and a set of parent control cards. Let's say you want your child (or children) to watch only 8 hours of TV a week. At week's start, you set the child's card for 8 hours. Your TV is plugged (and locked) into the Time-Scott Monitor. In order to turn the set on, you or the child must swipe the card through Time-Scout, at which point the set is operational and thirty minutes are subtracted from the child's eight-hour total. At the end of that thirty minutes, the set (or whatever electrical device being operated) turns off. Another swipe (and thirty-minute loss) is required to begin operation again.

Time-Scout works just like a debit card, limiting how much time a family spends with TV, DVDs, or computers.

Since the set of parent cards includes several that allow you to add or subtract time, even shut down the entire device until further notice, you also have the option of using the device for behavior modification. "Kiernan, you've done a wonderful job on your homework this week, so I'm adding an extra hour to your Time-Scout card for this weekend."

One of the side effects of this "pain-killer" is that it fosters family harmony. Siblings who haven't spoken civilly to each other in years are suddenly best friends and bringing new meaning to the term "time-sharing."

As good as the product is, if you have three televisions or two computers in the home and you want to limit children's time, you've got a problem. Time-Scout works on only one machine at a time (unless you buy more than one Time-Scout). So it's a number problem. If you wanted to lose weight and had four bowls of candy spread around the house, the first step would be to reduce the number of bowls. Once you're down to one TV or one computer, then Time-Scout will manage it for you. But first you have to manage the total.

One cautionary note: when Time-Scout is used with computers, it should only be used on the monitor, not the hard disk, since a sudden shutdown at the 30-minute mark would prevent correct shutdown procedures and thus loss of data.

If the Time-Scout price tag is too steep for you, there is a cheaper device for controlling the set. It's called "TVB-Gone" ($14.99), a keychain device sold at stores like Target. It will turn off any television set within range, so if you think your children have reached their TV-saturation point, simply click it (openly or secretly) and the sets shuts down. "Oh-oh—I think it's overheated, kids. Better go outside and play for a few hours while it cools down."

Kathleen Jacobs, a Catholic school teacher in Park Ridge, Illinois, shared the following with me in 2008: My five kids were raised before the Time-Scout Monitor technology but my sister came up with a great idea: The kids could earn 20 hours of TV time for each book read. We kept track by writing the numbers 1-20 on an index card and punching one for every 1/2 hour of TV watched. When the card was completely punched, they had to read another book to get more TV time. It made them think twice about what to watch. Today my grown children are avid readers.

Don’t kids need the entertainment break that electronic media offer?

Everyone needs a break but when you're talking about 1,460 hours a year (that's the total hours of TV, video, and DVD for the average child), that's a little more than a break. That's the equivalent of watching "Gone With the Wind" 392 times a year. Give me a break!

In his autobiography, A Life in the Twentieth Century, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (pictured right on December 17, 1965 Time cover) writes that he read 598 books by the age of 14 and viewed 482 movies between ages 14 and 19. If the latter sounds outrageous, it’s not. It amounts to one and a half movies a week or 90 minutes, compared to 1680 minutes of weekly entertainment for most American children today. So it’s not the entertainment that softens the mind but the dosage.

Toddlers and Media Three pediatric studies offer some sobering thoughts for parents and the future in examing infants' and toddlers' immersion in the current media world. Click TODDLERS to read synopses of the reports.

NEXT: What is the 'mechanical reading tutor'?

Chapter Nine — p. 1   p. 2   p. 3   p. 4   Footnotes

What about audio books? Are they for semi-literates?