Alex and the wall of TV's at Best Buy.He
was
mesmerized!
But, surviving in the land of no cable has been much easier than I first predicted. I think the biggest thing I disliked about the idea when Kris proposed it to me wasn't actually the cable itself but the DVR. Seriously! DVR is literally the best thing since sliced bread, no lie! But the computer (and the fact that it has an HDMI port) and Hulu Plus have stepped up to the plate and created their own version of DVR in the Schmelzer household.
But what embarking on the Land of NO CABLE has me wondering is, what message are we sending our son? That it's healthy to sit in front of the TV and do nothing? That TV is the only thing there is to do in the evenings? When pregnant, Kris and I spent numerous hours, days, months talking about what kind of parents we wanted to be. We talked about what we did as kids, I spent a lot of time outside playing on the swing set my dad built my sister and I, we would transform in our minds the back deck as a kitchen and would play with corn and sunflower seeds from the field behind the house. My best friend and I, when we were in elementary would pretend we were homicide detectives on the brink of breaking a major case. On rainy days, we would pretend the basement was either a school and we were the teachers or a hair salon and we were famous stylists. Point is, we used our imaginations ALL the time! We had the games systems (Nintendo and Sega at the time) and we did play with them, but we much rather preferred going outside.
As for Alex, we don't want him to always be sitting in front of the television or playing video games, we even talked about those things only being offered as rewards or only set a specific amount of time in front of the tube. We really want to encourage imagination and creativity and that isn't going to happen if we just let him sit around watching TV, and playing video games. But, he's not going to figure all this out on his own and we aren't doing him any favors. If we keep doing things the way we are, he's going to grow up watching hours worth of television and fight us when we tell him the TV has to turn off.
Don't get me wrong, we are still going to watch our shows, that part will never change but it's a matter of when and how often we are watching things. We can use the computer to catch up with the shows we've missed but only watch them AFTER Alex has gone to bed. I've already noticed his fascination with the TV. he can get his eyes locked in on it and already seems like he's turning into a zombie at 6 months. The excuse "he's too young to know what is going on" isn't going to work anymore, we are just fooling ourselves.
So WHY are we spending so much time inside??? It's Fall, it's beautiful outside, we live in-town with sidewalks lining both sides of the streets, and we have a dogger who LOVES to go for "w's" (if we actually say the word "walk", she goes all psycho excited on us) Our city is full of beautiful parks with playgrounds, ponds, greenery, why aren't we taking advantage of all these great aspects of our hometown? I'll tell you why, because we are watching How I Met Your Mother, or Modern Family, Raising Hope, so on and so on. Well, that has to stop and it's going to. Instead of coming home from work and turning on the TV and sitting down, we are going to plug in iPod, and turn on the 90's playlist we made for the hospital when I was in labor with Alex and we are going to play. We're going to pack up the stroller and put the harness on the dogger and go for a great big "W" to the park and feed the ducks. We're going to go sit outside and sit on the porch and sing with birds. We're going to roll around on the floor and play with toys and games. WE are going to axe our couch potato ways and give imagination and creativity a great big giant "hello world" :)
But what embarking on the Land of NO CABLE has me wondering is, what message are we sending our son? That it's healthy to sit in front of the TV and do nothing? That TV is the only thing there is to do in the evenings? When pregnant, Kris and I spent numerous hours, days, months talking about what kind of parents we wanted to be. We talked about what we did as kids, I spent a lot of time outside playing on the swing set my dad built my sister and I, we would transform in our minds the back deck as a kitchen and would play with corn and sunflower seeds from the field behind the house. My best friend and I, when we were in elementary would pretend we were homicide detectives on the brink of breaking a major case. On rainy days, we would pretend the basement was either a school and we were the teachers or a hair salon and we were famous stylists. Point is, we used our imaginations ALL the time! We had the games systems (Nintendo and Sega at the time) and we did play with them, but we much rather preferred going outside.
As for Alex, we don't want him to always be sitting in front of the television or playing video games, we even talked about those things only being offered as rewards or only set a specific amount of time in front of the tube. We really want to encourage imagination and creativity and that isn't going to happen if we just let him sit around watching TV, and playing video games. But, he's not going to figure all this out on his own and we aren't doing him any favors. If we keep doing things the way we are, he's going to grow up watching hours worth of television and fight us when we tell him the TV has to turn off.
Don't get me wrong, we are still going to watch our shows, that part will never change but it's a matter of when and how often we are watching things. We can use the computer to catch up with the shows we've missed but only watch them AFTER Alex has gone to bed. I've already noticed his fascination with the TV. he can get his eyes locked in on it and already seems like he's turning into a zombie at 6 months. The excuse "he's too young to know what is going on" isn't going to work anymore, we are just fooling ourselves.
So WHY are we spending so much time inside??? It's Fall, it's beautiful outside, we live in-town with sidewalks lining both sides of the streets, and we have a dogger who LOVES to go for "w's" (if we actually say the word "walk", she goes all psycho excited on us) Our city is full of beautiful parks with playgrounds, ponds, greenery, why aren't we taking advantage of all these great aspects of our hometown? I'll tell you why, because we are watching How I Met Your Mother, or Modern Family, Raising Hope, so on and so on. Well, that has to stop and it's going to. Instead of coming home from work and turning on the TV and sitting down, we are going to plug in iPod, and turn on the 90's playlist we made for the hospital when I was in labor with Alex and we are going to play. We're going to pack up the stroller and put the harness on the dogger and go for a great big "W" to the park and feed the ducks. We're going to go sit outside and sit on the porch and sing with birds. We're going to roll around on the floor and play with toys and games. WE are going to axe our couch potato ways and give imagination and creativity a great big giant "hello world" :)
I wish I could convince my husband to give up cable, but he won't because of sports. :( I don't normally sit down to watch TV until Cecilia is in bed. At night when we come home, we play outside if it's nice or go for a walk. If it's nasty or cold out she plays with her dolls or in her paly kitchen. While I cook dinner she is in the kitchen with me on her "play' kitchen. Then after dinner we do bath and story time where we usually read four or five books and sing songs. She is in bed at 7:30. She probably only gets a half hour to an hour of screen time a week.
ReplyDeleteYay to the 90's playlist! We use our cable music channels and play the 90's station. We love our TV and cable too, but just watch it when she goes to bed.
ReplyDeleteOh the 90's is seriously the best music genre, love me some Hootie ;)
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post! I am way too TV (and computer) addicted also and I feel guilty about it. I wish we spent more time outside and I really hope our kids play outside as much as I did when I was little. I also played a lot of Nintendo - Mario games and still LOVE those games. I don't actually see anything wrong with those types of video games as long as they don't replace outside time. I think Mario video games actually increase creativity and imagination. Plus they're interactive - not just sitting, watching and doing nothing. The violent video games, though... the ones my Hubs likes... are pretty disturbing. And don't get me started on Grand Theft Auto. LOL I digress.My Hubs has some family that don't even own a TV. They play board games, read, craft and have conversations!! That is the kind of family I'd like to have, but I can't part with my shows either. Ug Conundrum! This was a great post! I have some thinking to do. Thank you! (And good luck with no cable. We have the same cord and watch a lot of shows online too.)JamieFor Love of Cupcakes
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