We live on a creek in the part of our suburban town which is still "country."
We have a yard and lots of garden beds as I am an avid organic gardener.
My children are 6.5 (son) and just turned three (daughter) . We have never
had television in the house. When we watch a video, it is as a family
with all of us piled on the couch eating popcorn. My son's favorites include
the black and white version of National Velvet with Liz Taylor as a young
girl and Mickey Rooney. He also likes Harvey with Jimmy Stewart. We watch
a video about once every 4-6 weeks... clearly it is a big deal when we
do!
What do my children
do with themselves?
Well, they do so many things! They enjoy helping me do things. On nice
days, when I hang out wash, my daughter will count clothespins for me.
Before he was 3 I was handing my son a portobello mushroom and a table
knife. By the time I had the rest of dinner ready, he would have chopped
it up pretty well and it would go into the pot. Since he was 4 he has
had a garden plot of his own where he grows whatever he wants. He has
real tools that he uses carefully and well.
But it's not all work at our house! They often will play with their blocks
for a long time, constructing various cities. Sometimes a circus is created
using a lot of small plastic animals. They like to dress up and do tricks
in the living room, listening to old time string band music. They have
a basket of instruments that they use to make "parades." Sometimes,
if I want to concentrate on something in the kitchen, I get out the playdough
and a collection of rolling pins, garlic presses and cookie cutters. I
put it all out on the kitchen floor on a cheap vinyl tablecloth. They
play outdoors a great deal ; my daughter (3) loves her riding toys and
the sandbox. My son loves to dig and pound nails into scraps of lumber
making things. My son spends a lot of time "telling stories,"
talking out loud about the adventures of creatures he has made up.
I get time to myself almost every day because we have what used to be
called "nap time" but now is called "lie down" time.
After lunch, both kids are given lots of books (neither can read, but
they have been read to so often that they can recite many picture books).
The books are put in their beds with them. My son (6.5) can draw, look
at books, tell stories. Sometimes, if he seems restless, I will put a
storytelling tape on for him and he loves to listen to those. My daughter
still just looks at books, and then 4 times out of 6 falls asleep. Both
kids are used to entertaining themselves, so it isn't a problem. Lie down
time last for about an hour and a half. With our schedule we get to it
probably 3 days out of 5. The other days we are at a local swim and gym
program for homeschoolers, or running errands.
As to entertaining them, I've written elsewhere about my philosophy of
benign neglect (I didn't coin this term, but I wish I had!). I feel that
it is my job to create a warm, loving environment, filled with a few lovely
things to spur the imagination (the kids have very little in the way of
toys in comparison with their same age peers). I am available to suggest
or answer questions, loan out tape and scissors, hunt up cardboard, etc.,
but the projects and ideas come from the children.
Because we homeschool, I do spend a tremendous amount of time with my
children, but much of it is spent doing things like hiking, walking, reading
books to them and so on. They play on their own. When I teach, I am fully
present to them. I try to say "yes" as often as possible to
anything that they generate as an idea for a project they want to do on
their own. I make sure that if they want to show me a new trick, have
me watch a play they've invented, etc., I'm available.
As to handling TV-free with others, we have no TV in the house, so no
one who comes here can use it. The one time we hired a babysitter for
the evening while we were in a hotel in another city, we specified that
the television was not to be used. The kids had a wonderful time with
the woman who came and she was glad to have real kids to play with!
How are my kids different? I think the biggest difference is that they
have no notion of what it means to be smart-alecky, come up with one liners,
insult other people or find body humor funny. They are genuinely interested
in the world around them and the people they meet. They talk to anyone
and don't ever make fun of people who look different than we do. An example:
woman I know described how much her grandchildren had enjoyed the movie
Schreck and said I should definitely take my children. As I usually do,
I asked her to "tell me about it." She described a scene in
which the main character farts in the swamp and all the fish die. She
then reminded me how much all children love stuff like that. I confess,
I was baffled as my kids wouldn't understand the humor in something like
that at all. Even if they understood it, I sure wouldn't want to appeal
to the lowest common denominator of humor a kid can "get."
The second major difference is their attention span. Both children can
easily spend an hour or more on a project without fighting with each other
or getting tired of it. They never say, "I'm bored." They understand
that it is their job to come up with ideas for things to do. They have
a tremendous auditory memory from being read to so much. Because I am
purposely delaying teaching my son to read, he also has a wonderful visual
ability to look at the pictures in a picture book and figure out what's
going on in the story. He often notices things that I, print dependent
as I am, simply hadn't noticed.
My kids also don't "get" violence. They simply don't understand
what's funny about someone getting hurt. The other advantage (in case
I haven't convinced you yet that it's worth it to go without TV) is that
my kids are not consumer-oriented, nor do they hanker for commercial toys.
When you turn off the TV, it is amazing how many toys suddenly don't make
sense. If you've never seen "powderpuff girls" all the stuff
associated with them makes no sense.
Perhaps you will think I'm crazy, but one of the gifts I gave my son for
his fourth birthday was his own scotch tape dispenser with three rolls
of tape. At the time he was spending hours every week making these elaborate
paper and tape sculpture things. When he opened up his gift, he jumped
up, threw his arms around me and was thrilled! I had never denied him
use of my tape dispenser, but having one of his own was a big deal for
him. To my mind, his joy in having something that was designed to meet
his own unique needs and not something he had been primed to want from
watching TV was worth much more than the value of the tape dispenser.
I think I deal with less whining and "the gimmes" because we
don't have TV and we don't buy stuff often. That is an advantage for me
personally, though I think it's good for my kids not to develop bad habits
like whining, complaining, and comparing their lot to others.
I've worked with MANY,
MANY families in both my personal and professional life. Of the families
I know that are without TV, I have yet to meet one who says, "Gee,
life was so much better when we watched TV." Even families who return
to the tube reminisce fondly about how much more communication and togetherness
there was when the TV wasn't sucking up time and energy and creating wants
and desires with its incessant advertising.
Trust me. It's great without TV!
Sue
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