TV Free experiment

I'm going to be honest and admit how difficult Day One was yesterday.  Halfway through the morning I noticed two phenomenon:

1) A blog post that should have taken me twenty minutes, took me two hours (and I published it full of typos!).

2) When my kids play together, somebody ALWAYS gets in trouble.

By 11AM, I had removed all the toys from Alex's bedroom after witnessing him take away his sister's bottle of bubbles and dump it out in the bushes.  This was AFTER he'd already been reprimanded for stealing her toys earlier and I was looking for a punishment with some marrow in it.  He still hasn't totally earned them all back!!

So if the TV is off, I have to actually PAY ATTENTION to my children or they just get in trouble, which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't mind not getting anything done.  We're only one day into this experiment, but I already feel like it won't have much sticking power after the week is up.  I deserve to be able to write a blog post in peace (can I get an amen!) and if my kids get an hour of screen time every day as a result, so be it.

Comments

[Angela Langowski]

I admire you for doing this but my question is how do you entertain an only child when you don't have time to play with her? I know this sounds like a dumb question but I let my 4-year-old daughter watch TV when I don't have time to play with her because she constantly wants her dad or I to play with her and I want her to play by herself some of the time. When she doesn't, she ends up watching TV and we let her.

I know that doesn't make me sound like a good parent.

[Bunny]

it takes my kids about a week to detox from the tv. It's like they forget how to play on their own, but after a week-ish they figure it out and are much better behaved.

[Hall]

Try to hang with it... they really do reset and then remember other things to do and play with. When they go back to watching after a week, the compulsion to watch will be lower and they will have remembered/discovered other fun things to do.

[Kookaburra]

I absolutely positively agree with you. I'm able to get a few things done with my 2 year old entertaining herself... she's pretty good at that. But many times she can get pretty hyperactive (aka wild) so I'll put the TV on alittle bit each day so she'll actually calm down and give me a break. Yea, either way it still takes me forever to type up a blog post now that I also have a 3 month old.