Parental Involvement in Middle Childhood: Can It Protect Children from Harmful TV Viewing Habits and Behavior? Fact Sheet. Publication #2008-28.

OVERVIEW Analyses using data about more than 30,000 6to 11-year-olds from the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) have found linkages among a child’s television viewing habits, parental involvement, and levels of child behavior problems. Specifically, analyses indicate that children who watched more than three hours of television a day, who did not communicate very well with their parents, and whose parents knew few or none of their friends had greater levels of externalizing (acting out) and internalizing behavior problems. Moreover, we found that children in middle childhood were especially likely to have behavior problems if they watched more than three hours of television a day and had low parental involvement.