Well it’s been a week (and two days) of no TV and I survived. There were a few times I cheated, for instance, Thursday morning Hayden woke up at 1am and could not fall back asleep. At 3:30am it was clear to me that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep either so we tip-toed into the living room and watched Prince Caspian together until 7 and then the morning news. I also cheated in the early evening a few times; when the kids went to bed I watched mindless TV for a bit just to regroup for the evening chores that were waiting for my attention. I did keep it off at bedtime, which was a huge step forward and I was successful at keeping it off in the morning too. Breakfast at the table with the Wall Street Journal is preferable to gagging at the horrible “news” coverage on the network morning shows.
As for the kids, they didn’t seem to notice their drop in TV allowance. Maybe because I didn’t make a big deal of it (I didn’t say anything to them at all) I just kept their attention focused on doing other things. We even had a couple of nice days where they played outside for a change. It was muuuuuddy outside thus they got muuuuuddy, but I just had them strip down to their underwear before they stepped foot in the apartment.
I can confidently state that I will keep the small changes I’ve made and continue to do better. Maybe even one day I’ll take the TV out of our bedroom altogether! Oh, and I can’t wait to have a house with real rooms (separate from each other- no more dining room, living room, play room, kitchen all in one room) and then have only one room specifically used for TV viewing. It’s the little things isn’t it?
That's so great! There are days that I get all ambitious and keep the TV off all day, and then the next day I get ambitious about projects that need my attention, and it's just so easy to put Charlie in front of the TV for a little while. You're right, though, about the kids not really noticing. It takes only a day or two of keeping it off for them to just get used to keeping busy other ways. Do you know in some countries (Ireland, for example) people have to pay a monthly fee to watch TV? Maybe if that were the case here we'd watch a little less.
ReplyDeleteHey, that's an idea! I could keep a jar for collecting money for every time we turn it on. Then we could donate the money or use it to buy books or some other activity to do instead of watching TV. What do you think?
That's brilliant but I don't want to commit to that just yet:-)
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