TV and Me

We are now near the end of TV-Turn-Off Week. I will most likely love and hate the return to our TV viewing. I have, on the one hand, really enjoyed this week of TV abstinence, especially in seeing my boys engage in pretend play, outdoor activities, and playing with each other. On the other hand, my life is easier when I can distract my toddler with Bunnytown or My Friends Tigger and Pooh for long enough to actually complete some work. So I have mixed feelings, to say the least.

I also find I enjoy the silence, even as I miss the entertainment of my favorite satirical news shows. No TV makes me a better parent, too, as I am forced to interact with my kids more. We have really enjoyed playing outdoors after dinner, when it's cool outside. Since it now stays light late, there is no reason we couldn't do this every day, but we usually default to watching TV instead, except for this last week. This means the kids are watching a show, my husband is on the computer, and I'm in the kitchen, cleaning up dinner. This keeps us all in our own little worlds. Without TV, I feel like I need to interact, to show the kids that we can have more fun without TV, so we go outside and play active games, or stay in and play board games, or just make up something to pretend. One night we drove over to a lake near our home and walked around the lake at twilight, which was beautiful--we saw a huge blue heron.

Lastly, the first day of no-TV week, when my kids were having a complete melt-down at the thought of 7 days of no TV or computer games, convinced me firmly that TV had become way too important in our lives (I told my toddler that Tigger and Pooh and the Bunnytown bunnies were on vacation). That made me think that some form of no-TV time needs to become a permanent part of our routine. We used to have no-TV Tuesdays, but somehow we dropped that habit awhile back. I think it was moving three times in the last year-and-a-half. Moving required some kind of distraction to keep the kids occupied while I packed, loaded U-Hauls, cleaned, and finally unpacked. I found myself encouraging the kids to watch more TV, just so I could get it all done. But now that there are no moves on the horizon (knock wood), we need to get back to finding other ways to spend our time. I am especially worried about the long, hot summer approaching. I have nothing on my boys' schedules except one week of camp for the older one, but I don't want it to degenerate into two-and-a-half months or non-stop electronic entertainment. I will have to think long and hard about how to set reasonable limits on TV and computer time. (I remember back before I had children when I swore I would never use TV as a babysitter--ha!)