Television Free Week

It's done, we made it! One week with no TV. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be. Granted, it was a holiday week and we had my Mom and Dad here to visit with for two of the days. Even then, it wasn't all sunshine and roses. I definitely had to spend more one-on-two time with the kids. In fact, when adding up my time sheet for this week I was shocked to see I only had 7.5 of my 15 hours in--and 4 of those were Holiday hours which I didn't actually work. So I would definitely have to work on finding a way to work more with no TV. The biggest difference, and most significant, was that the kids really played together. ,They played with their toys instead of just dumping them out and forgetting about them. They pretended to take their whole little Dora the Explorer family camping. They dressed up dolls. They did puzzles. I don't remember ever seeing them play so much with their toys, and certainly not without begging them to play for a while, and definitely not together. Bird did develop some nasty habits like pushing or hitting Sprout when he got in her face. Sprout definitely got in her face a bit more. They both have such strong personalities, but for the most part, this week they were able to just hang out. We did lots of outside activities. Beo brought home a kiddie pool and a novelty sprinkler that shoots balls out the top. The kids couldn't have had more fun at a waterpark.

The TV will not stay off, but it will definitely have a lesser role in our house. Having it in the basement makes sure of that. I don't feel guilty letting them watch some TV though. They watch good age appropriate educational stuff, mostly PBS. When they watch Nick Jr. on Saturday mornings (when it's on regular non-cable stations), they have to turn off the TV during commercials. My goal is that the kids won't default to TV anymore when they're bored. They'll keep learning how to play again, and get more Mom time in the process.