Locking out the kids

I know it sounds cruel but I’ve recently started locking my children out of their favourite channels on Sky. Partly because they watch too much television and partly because it’s a useful punishment tool.

I know its mean but I needed a way to restrict my daughters television viewing. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t get TV all day every day and they don’t have TVs in their bedroom but she does often monopolise the living room TV while we’re out of the room.

She always puts it on CBBC and so my four year old son doesn’t get a look in and can never watch his favourite shows on Cbeebies.

So I decided to use the parental controls on the Sky box - designed to stop kids watching things not suitable for them - to lock all the childrens channels and make them pin protected.

Now if my daughter wants to watch her channel she needs to ask our permission first. This means that I can put it on Cbeebies for my son, go downstairs to the kitchen to make dinner and know that she can’t change the channel.

She has to come down stairs and ask us if she wants CBBC and we only say yes if he’s had at least two shows that he likes.

It’s simple to do as well - go into the Sky Services Menu > Click Parental Controls > Set a Pin Number > Go to Channel Restrictions > Page Down until you get to the 600s and keep pushing yellow until they’re all locked.

Once they’re set up you can lock and unlock the channels with a single button - to do that just go back to the Parental Controls Menu and press red - that will either turn them on or off (you’ll be asked to enter the pin).

If they’re on - to watch the channel you have to enter the pin number - if it’s off you can watch them as normal.

Now to work out how to lock Soaps!

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