TV watching isn’t the best of habits, but most of us do it, and most of us let our kids do it. One of the troubles is that the commercials encourage kids (and adults) to want so much stuff, it’s just insane.

Of course, you can use commercials as teaching moments, and help your kids to learn how to cope with advertising. They’re going to be dealing with it their entire lives, after all. They should know how to be skeptical and how to recognize needs versus wants.

Not an easy lesson for any of us. But very, very important.

On the other hand, you can help your kids pick more than the usual fare. You can avoid the over marketed popular kids shows that sell tons of plastic junk toys of the starring characters.

My kids enjoy  a lot of the usual shows, but channels such as The Discovery Channel and Planet Green really get their attention well too.

Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego Go have their good points, as they encourage kids to think about the environment. However, they also sell an awful lot of plastic junk, so it’s a bit of a toss up with shows like that. I’m much more fond of PBS shows for my kids, such as Curious George, Arthur and It’s a Big, Big World for them. Fewer commercials, even between shows, and it always seems like far fewer toys available for them.

It really is amazing just how much kids pick up from television. Some of it’s good, but other parts not so much. Help them pick  great shows when they do watch TV.