And how I broke my kids of the TV curse
Okay, I’m not here to tell anyone how much TV they or their children should watch, I’m just here to say that come last fall, my kids and I were watching waaaaay too much TV.
I’ve never been one to set a timer and monitor how much TV my kids are watching (which might have been part of my problem to begin with…) and I started to notice my kids (who are 4 and 2) behaved worse after watching TV or on days where they watched “too much” TV. Synchronously, I was abruptly woken up every morning (sometimes before 6am) by my 4 year-old asking “Can you turn on a show for me?” To which I responded by schlepping myself to the living room to turn on the TV, then returning to my bed for another half hour. And heaven forbid the show ended and I was still in bed, unable to push the remote to start another show.
Meanwhile, during this time frame, I was binge watching Breaking Bad (yes, I’m 5 years late to the party) with my husband and it was weighing me down. I’m not a person who can handle a ton of dark TV drama, so watching multiple episodes a night on most nights of the week had me in a real funk. Not to mention I was staying up later just to watch “one more episode” of a show that was not benefiting my mental health.
And so, No-TV November was born. When it comes to cutting back on something in my life, I’m an all-in, cold-turkey kind of person (just rip that band-aid right off), not to mention I like a good challenge. Here were the parameters:
- No TV for the kids for the month of November (We had company in town at the beginning of November so we really didn’t start our challenge until November 5th, so it was *almost* a whole month.
- No TV for me except for sports (the Dallas Cowboys and Kansas Jayhawk Basketball, to be precise)
First, I want to point out that I don’t have kids that throw long tantrums or whine excessively if they don’t get their way. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of whining in my house. What I’m saying is, if and when I stand my ground on a “no,” my kids whine and complain for 5 -10 minutes, but then they move on and find something else to do. So for me, this challenge was all about consistency and increasing my tolerance for a little whining, knowing that in a few minutes they would probably move on.
Second, my children are still at an age where you can distract them with another toy or activity when they don’t get their way with something else. So, when they asked to watch TV, I could suggest we read a book or do a puzzle with minimal resistance in return. This challenge was just as much about me being present with my kids as it was about me not giving into their whining. I had to let a few chores go that I would have otherwise used the TV to distract my kids so I could just get them done. But, let me tell you, the reward was worth it.
So, how did it go? FAN-TAS-TIC! Now, there was some whining, and pouting, but no one had a full-on meltdown (including me)! And guess what? After the first several days, my kids started to find stuff to do in their room after they woke up, and I was granted that last half hour of sleep uninterrupted. HALLELUJAH! We even continued the challenge after November 30th because the kids just stopped asking to watch TV altogether and no-TV November became the norm.
Its been over two months since we started the no-TV challenge and I can successfully say we are still going strong! We have allowed our children to watch TV again but it has been restricted to the short amount of time after dinner and before their bedtime routine. The kids are still entertaining themselves in the morning after waking up and if one of them suggests I turn on the TV, the other will proudly proclaim “its No-TV November.” And I’m not correcting them. I guess I should have also mentioned above that my 2 and 4 year-old have no concept of what month it is.
