A couple of weeks ago I was reading an editorial article in parenting magazine about a family that decided to change their TV rules and what happened. The author said her two daughters (roughly elementary school age) would ask to watch TV a lot and while they had limits on how much they could watch, they did watch some every day. The parents decided to make a deal with them, that during the week there wouldn’t be any TV and on the weekends they could go crazy and watch as much as they wanted (barring any planned activities). It ended up working really well for them, and after the first weekend, that they spent obsessively in front of the TV, on the following weekends they watched a couple of hours on Saturday morning and then became interested in other activities and didn’t notice when their mom walked into the family room and turned the TV off.
I have been pondering what to do about TV watching in our house. Our kids don’t watch that much TV in the first place, but probably about 30 minutes in the morning and then 30 minutes on some evenings but not most. While this fits into the “less than an hour a day” rule that I recommend when I’m seeing pediatric patients in the office, it still seems like too much to me. I don’t think there are any good studies with “no TV watching” as one of the categories, because it’s just not realistic in our current society (sadly) but theoretically I think it is better for them to not watch that much TV. I also get sick of them asking (or begging) to watch “just one more!” and so I thought we should try this strategy.
We implemented it one week ago and so far it has been really good. They didn’t take advantage of the rule over the weekend like I thought they would, but they were busy with a lot of activities. I was impressed though because at one point I offered to let them watch TV and they actually chose to go play instead. Once the weekdays started there have been occasional complaints about “I hate that rule!” when they have asked to watch something in the morning and we have said “no,” but for the most part they have adapted well. One morning I came downstairs with the baby and found Avery on the couch reading a book and Asher sitting at the table coloring. They hadn’t even been told to find something to do, they had done it completely on their own!
Interestingly, I’ve also found that I am watching less TV too. I like having the cabinet doors on the media center shut, it makes the room feel nicer to me. And there isn’t anything I really want to watch so I don’t have the same impetus to mindlessly turn on the TV like I sometimes will do when the doors are open. I don’t know how long this experiment will last, I feel like with kids you just have to keep trying things and find the things that work, but I have my fingers crossed that this one will stick!
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