Let's get this out of the way first thing: I love TV. I love movies, I love TV shows and I've even been known to love commercials. As a visual artist I've found inspiration while watching everything from Ace of Cakes to a documentary on the Mariinsky Theatre. Sometimes, I even crave TV. Jeremiah, on the other hand, finds most TV to be a waste of time - he enjoys movies and the "higher-quality" shows produced by HBO and Showtime but could live without the constant flicker of the TV screen. Long ago though, we made a compromise about TV - we watch some shows that I want to watch and I do some clicking around but we limit our TV until after Z is in bed and mostly watch DVDs.

At the same time, we're heavily invested in educational toys, play intensively with our four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Z, and have sheltered her from sweets and junk food so aggressively she downs spinach-infused smoothies with glee and loves brussel sprouts. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen, a lot of time outdoors in our garden, and a lot of time reading.

So it may or may not surprise you that we let Z watch about an hour of TV a day and intend to let her watch as much as she wants by the time she's six.

More on that in a minute. First, let's check out what Juice Box Jungle's parents have to say on the matter...

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When Z started getting old enough to watch videos (which for us was just shy of two years) we'd let her watch a DVD for no more than 30 minutes a day. At 4.5 years old, she is still allowed to watch videos but it's usually about an hour, and on some days she doesn't watch anything at all. We try to reserve her television viewing for times when we really need it - like when I'm at home with her but need to rest due to pain or when we really need to get something accomplished - usually cleaning or blogging - and she's not in the mood to play on her own.

We restrict her TV viewing to DVDs, most of them pre-screened by us, unless they're Scholastic Videos or something else guaranteed to be family-friendly. Even most Disney movies get a parents-only viewing before we let her take them in, and a lot of the "classics," with their passive princesses and evil witches, don't pass the sniff test in our household.

One benefit to our focus on DVDs is that at this point she doesn't have enough of a routine with TV or understand that shows come on at certain times of the day. Our main issue with TV, as opposed to DVDs, is the commercials. We aren't interested in Z being advertised to during the commercial breaks and by limiting her screen time to DVDs (and skipping previews) we are limiting her knowledge of the hottest toys, the latest inclusion in the Happy Meal, or that spinach is supposed to be gross or that popsicles aren't really made of juice, yogurt and flax seed.

There was a time when once she started watching a video Z didn't want to stop. There was a lot of screaming and crying involved every time we tried to turn off the video, so we stopped putting on videos for a while. Eventually she figured out that if she got upset every time the video was over, she wouldn't get to watch them at all, and she changed her behavior pretty quickly.

We plan to homeschool Z, but we're more of the unschooling bent, which means we'd argue that we're already homeschooling her even though we don't use a set curriculum. Our school plan will largely involve following her interests and help her develop her knowledge and critical thinking as her interests evolve. It takes a lot of willpower on our part to follow and trust in Z's interests and love of learning. But with that in mind, it's hard to feel okay about limiting her time spent watching TV. Age-appropriateness is one thing - every child needs to be introduced to certain topics and themes when we as parents know he or she is ready for them. But I think encouraging her to seek information from many different sources and viewpoints is also important to her development.

In a year or two we intend to start allowing her free access to TV, if not to all channels in all time slots. And while she might binge occasionally, she will also choose to continue doing the other things that she enjoys like drawing, painting, running around, playing, reading, and so on - just as there are many times she'd rather do those things now than watch TV. In part, it's because I feel like if we don't let her learn how to balance her time and moderate her interests, we're failing her as parents. I also think it will be part of our job to make sure there is enough going on around her that is more interesting than TV, at least much of the time, that she won't turn to it as a primary source of interest.

For a lot more arguments and thought along these lines, check out Joyfully Rejoycing's "Arguments Against Arguments Against TV."