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Home › Articles › Play Time › Mike Berenstain and the Trouble with Commercials

Mike Berenstain and the Trouble with Commercials

How This Dad Is Fighting Back Against Ads Aimed at Children

By Donna Smith

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Berenstain recommends that children under 4 watch only a half-hour of TV per day, and older children watch only one hour per day. "But this is perhaps a lost cause," he says. "Virtually all children are permitted to watch far more than that. The best advice, then, is to let children watch TV as little as possible!"

Explaining Ads to Children
Have you ever really explained why television shows are packed with advertisements? Berenstain recommends that you do. "Parents should explain that the commercials are there just to sell things, that they are exaggerations," he says. "They should give examples from the child's own experience. 'Remember that toy poodle that you wanted for Christmas that walked and barked? Remember how the head fell off before Christmas dinner?'"

The Berenstain Bears and the Trouble with Commercials is another fun tool for parents. The book "explains all this in a funny, entertaining form," Berenstain says. "Kids will discount 90 percent of what you say if you just lecture them. But if you read them a storybook on the subject that they really enjoy, it has a better chance of getting through to them."

What would Berenstain like to say to the companies selling their products to children during cartoons and other kid shows? "I would suggest that advertisers think about their own children and consider how destructive it is to them to be bombarded with seductive ads for things that they don't need," he says.

Do Something Else!

Mike Berenstain has an infinite amount of ideas to get kids out from in front of the television. Here are just a few!

  • Read a book, the funny papers or a comic book.
  • Take a walk. Take them down to a stream or pond to catch frogs and get muddy. Look at some bugs; look at the stars.
  • Go to the zoo or check out a museum.
  • Play baseball, soccer, football, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, go sledding, biking, rollerblading, skating or skiing.
  • Go to an amusement park or baseball game.
  • Catch lightening bugs; play tag, hopscotch, hide-and-seek, marbles, jacks, jump rope, a board game, cards; build a model plane.
  • Blow bubbles, blow up balloons, have a water balloon fight.
  • Squirt each other with a hose; tickle each other.
  • Dress up in old clothes and put on a show in the garage.
  • Paint a picture; play word games; sing a song; play an instrument; spin around and around and make yourself dizzy.
  • Catch butterflies; make a birdhouse; go swimming; dig a hole in the backyard and fill it up with water and go fishing in it.
  • Go up in the attic and look at pictures of Grandma in her bathing suit at Asbury Park in 1922.
  • Write a story about the happy little bunny and the mean old chicken.
  • Play with dolls, building blocks, toy cars, paper planes, model trains, play houses.
  • Make paper mache and squish it up; play with clay.
  • Look at clouds.
  • Try to touch your nose with your tongue; learn to yodel; take the dog for a walk; give your cat some catnip; feed a duck; learn some magic tricks; look through a microscope or telescope.
  • Make a bad smell with a chemistry set; take apart an old radio and see if you can make it work; make a television set out of an old cardboard box and put on a puppet show for your friends.


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