hi i'm dr anna clarkson and i'm here with parenting behind the behavior from the university of wisconsin-madison division of extension today i want to give you three tips for how you can select games and shows for your child or work with your child to select those games to remember these three tips you need to remember content context and child so the first thing is content and there are a lot of ways we can look at content um you know you can look at um rating systems you can look at the topics
of the shows but the question i really like to ask when i'm thinking about shows or games for kids is what values does this show or game or movie model and do they match my values so if friendship is really important to you do you see friendship between kids and between adults in the show if science is really important to you is there an element of science in here and which one of your values does it kind of go against um maybe you really hate seeing siblings fighting with each other and there'
s a show or a movie that your kids want to watch that has siblings that fight a lot with each other so as you think about content ask does it match my values and i want to give you permission to say no to shows or movies or games telling your kids that one movie or show is not allowed in your household is okay in fact it's really good for kids to hear why you watch or use apps or games or shows and to to maybe even talk about how your values line up with their values you can also use tools like
pbs kids resources or common sense media to help you kind of sift through all of the resources that are out there second think about context so context is like what's the the stuff surrounding my child using this show or this game or this app a big question to ask is is my child going to do this by themselves or are they going to do it together for instance um doing video games with a friend can be a really wonderful bonding experience for children or with a sibling whereas sometimes it can be i
solating when a child is just doing that by themselves uh you can also ask yourself what is this time on this game or the screen replacing um so did my child get outside today to do some exercise and play and now this is when my child is kind of decompressing with something that i think is matching my family values or is this the only thing my child has been doing today so think about shows and games in the context of a balanced day trying to incorporate all the things that that make up for a he
althy and whole day finally think about your child um different children react to things differently so you need to ask yourself how does my child react and if you have multiple children ask how does this child react an example of this is that you know um many families love to do a game or a show or a movie um right before bedtime it's a nice way to wind down some children are incredibly sensitive to the light from the screen or the emotions and the excitement that's in a show or a video game an
d that kind of excitement can make it so that they wake up in the middle of the night or that they have a really hard time falling asleep so think about is my child better off if we do something like you know art or outside play or you know even listening to audiobooks in the evening you can also think boy my one child wasn't bothered at all by um you know exciting parts of shows but another child really is bothered and keeps bringing it up and so think about how does this child react to shows a
nd games and apps and um how can i best support this child and offer shows and games that really are a good fit for this child so just as a reminder when you're thinking about shows and games and apps for your child remember content context and your child i wish you well
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