Good news, so far we have
adopted this as our new strategy at home and it has been accepted and
implemented and is going strong! The
first few weeks were actually harder on us as parents than I think it was on
the kids. I didn’t realize what a gut
reaction it is for me when I’m trying to get something done or when I feel like
they are irritating me to plop them in front of the TV and say “here, watch something!” So it was good insight into my own behavior
and my own triggers! They no longer
complain about not watching TV on the weekdays, they know the rule. And they still don’t watch an excessive
amount on weekends, typically an hour or two each day. It feels good that there are 4 solid days of
the week that the TV doesn’t come on in our house and I would encourage other
people to try it too (I say 4 because Friday is “movie night” at our house and
so they get to watch that night).
I am now moving on to Phase
2, which I didn’t know there would be, actually, but now I can see that the TV
was not enough. And I think Phase 2 is
going to be more difficult. What has
happened is that because the TV is off limits, the kids have found “the other
screen,” the computer screen, and latched onto that. They have a newfound interest in playing
computer games ever since we started the experiment. The hard part about it is that we already
limit them to only educational games (math games, spelling games, etc.) and so
technically what they are doing is educational and for Avery it even counts as
homework/study time. So I’m trying to
figure out what our limit should be on this type of activity. I’m leaning toward 30 minutes a day as a
limit. I still think that interacting
with a screen (computer or TV) is generally not the kind of “play” that I want
for them on an extended basis and so limiting this seems like a good idea. But I also don’t want to take away
educational opportunities either and certainly computer skills are
important. I’m open to thoughts or
comments!
