More Reasons to Turn Off TV

April 27, 2007

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Are you participating in TV Turnoff Week? How’s it going?

My kids don’t watch a lot of TV. My 4 year old daughter is allowed to watch The Big Comfy Couch and the boys like Cyberchase (and while I don’t view TV as educational, they do actually pick up some math concepts from the show). So it’s not a huge transition for us, but I did expect some resistance.

The first day, they asked and I said no. I talked with them about TV Turnoff Week and the purpose of it. I think it took the emphasis off Mom, which was nice. :)

My 4 year old daughter is the only one who seemed upset. She did whine a bit the first day. Interestingly, by the second day, noone even seemed to notice or care. The only thing I’ve noticed is that they are fighting more. That’s not a big shock, because TV kind of numbs them and they’re less likely to get on each other’s nerves.

But the extra fighting did spur me to do something different. I realized that lately, my kids have had a bit TOO much freedom in their schedule. My oldest is the only one who really “does school” in our homeschooling family.

The 6 year old is not all that interested in learning to read, and I’m not concerned. He enjoys writing letters. He writes letters to his cousin, to his Nannie, to me, to his Dad, etc. So he’s learning how to write and spell that way.

He also spends LOTS of time creating Lego structures. I’m a big fan of Legos. Free middle of the night acupressure aside, Legos are a very brain stimulating toy in my opinion. They’re the ultimate in open ended toys. They require imagination and creativity. He creates things that astound me and that I don’t think I could ever make. I’m convinced he’ll be an architect or engineer (or perhaps an electrician) when he’s grown.

But back to what I did.

Even though my oldest is very conscientious about his schoolwork and I almost never have to bug him about it, he still has a lot of freedom in his schedule and the routine is a bit lax.

So I sat down and made a flexible schedule for the kids. There’s schoolwork time, quiet time, outside time, chore time, and plenty of no particular thing time. But it’s still a flexible schedule. I sat down and explained the schedule to them and told them that I thought they were fighting too much, likely because they were bored. I told them that the fighting was getting too much for Mom and that I wanted a peaceful household, so when fighting erupted, BOTH parties would be assigned a chore to do together.

Yesterday when they started in on their daily attempt to kill each other, I reminded them that boredom leads to bickering, and the 4 year old and 9 year old were instructed to sweep and mop the kitchen floor.

:)

To my surprise they didn’t balk, but got to work, and at the end were pretty worn out and needed a rest. Hey maybe they’ll be to exhausted to argue!

But this post was supposed to be about TV.

I think what I’ve learned this week is that TV is indeed the “creamy filling” that fills us up, preventing us from making progress in our lives. The upsurge in sibling rivalry spurred me to take action. This has major implications for my life.

What do you think?

Posted by carrie | Filed Under Misc 

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