Good riddance! We've just completed two weeks of TV-free living. It took a while to get to this point.
Last fall we attended a homeschool conference in our town. The speaker, Carole Joy Seid, said that TV is detrimental to the development of children under the age of two. TV-watching should be very limited, none at all is better, for older children. So we went TV-free for a week or so before I caved in and started watching TV again.
Prior to that our son would watch "Cars" or some other animated movie all day long. No, really. ALL day long. Maybe "Cars" three times in a row and then "Madagascar" or such a couple times. We put a stop to that. For the last few months the rule was no TV unless it's dark out or raining.
Even with that rule we watched TV at the two worst times of the day. One, when the kids should be going to bed. And two, when my wife and I should be going to bed.
Instead of starting the kids' bedtime routine at 7pm, we'd watch "American Idol", "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition", or some other family-friendly programming. Their bedtime gets pushed back, which meant time for household chores got pushed back or eliminated from the evening's activities.
My wife and I'd turn on the TV again at 10pm for the news, then maybe "Seinfeld", Jay Leno, "King of the Hill". Before you know it, it's midnight, which is when "Extra" comes on. So we've been living on way less than eight hours of sleep a night for a looooong time.
With the school year starting and just being fed up with the way things were, the TV was banished to the basement two weeks ago. Had the cable TV dropped. Eventually, we'll set up the TV and DVD player to be able to watch movies in the basement. But not for a long time until we've mastered this new habit.
So what have we done with ourselves due to this TV-shaped hole in our lives? Hole? What hole? Here's a list:
- Personally, read lots of books on the topics in this blog
- The kids are always asking us to read books to them. (After the first week, we haven't heard once "I want to watch TV".)
- Attend to the woefully ignored household chores
- Play Zoobs with the kids
- Have conversations with my wife. Hmm, what a concept.
- Get some sleep for change.
- Listen to Ravi Zacharias at oneplace.com
- Last, but not least - get a life
Getting rid of the TV is one of the best decisions we've made.
The book The Plug-In Drug was recommended to me by my fellow lemming. See sidebar for The Lemming Media Group. The book discusses the trouble with TV.
We're living life real-time for real.
1 comment:
The actual summer TV rule was "no TV while the sun is up, and no TV an hour before bed."
It was great. They would ask to watch a show, and I'd say "Is the sun up?" and they'd say "uh, yeah...." and then I'd say "well then?" And they'd walk away pouting.
Now that the temptation has been removed, they haven't asked once!
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