I am at the bitter end of Saturday, Day Six of TV Turn Off Week, and the family has successfully not clicked on either one of our sets since we went to bed last Sunday.
It helps that I hid all the remote controls.
But still, I think even if I hadn't, we would have had the strength of character to keep the screens dark. Though we have been tempted, and have kind of "cheated" just a little tiny bit. Amanda goes to a latchkey program here in our neighborhood after school three days a week, and we allow her to watch what little bit of television is on there. If there was a set turned on at the mall, or coffee shop, we peeked. We definitely peeked. Once we sat at our kitchen table and noticed we could see through our neighbor's window and view their set ... but the distance was too great and the picture was too small to be meaningful. I confess it here only in the interest of full disclosure.
My wife did ask her boss to TiVo one of our six "must watch" shows. The other five we gave up this week ... but even that was not such a sacrifice since two of them weren't on and two others were reruns (I think; I gave up reading the TV listings this week). Finally, we agreed that playing a video game using the TV screen wouldn't be considered watching television ... but no one even did that.
We've spent more time playing games on the computer, we've read a whole lot more, and my daughter has spent some time this week composing her first musical piece on the piano. And oh, we napped a little bit more. That's always good.
Did anybody else out there take part in this social experiment? What was it like for you?
1 comment:
We tuned out as well, although the "week" was really a reinforcing excuse for "dad is ticked that he had to ask the kids to turn off the TV and go to bed toooo many times". But we did play Quiddler (a card/word game)a few times that week, a rarity now that the kids are 17 & 18. And read more as well.
Post a Comment