I’ve never really been too concerned about the amount of T.V. my kids watch. I would often enter the room with the T.V. on and look over to see them playing barbies, colouring, or playing with another toy of some sort. They are paying no attention to what is on, having lost interest after ten minutes into whatever show they had to watch. They play outside often, running around, bouncing on the trampoline or playing make believe in the playhouse. But now that my oldest is getting close to turning 7, I started to notice a big change when it comes to T.V. She now pays intense attention to what she is watching and will last through the whole program. Also she has started to try and rush through dinner hoping to get right back to the television. We are in the middle of a hot summer and I prefer they come in out of the heat of the afternoon to hide out in the cool basement and that may be a contributor to her new found attachment. Well the other morning she comes over to me on my computer and says “Mom, can we go to moondough.com?”
“What? Why?” is my response, dumbfounded by her request.
“Moondough never dries out, so you can use it again and again.” She smiles sweetly.
OH my, my daughter just sounded like a commercial, ok time to cut back.
....fast forward to today; this is the first day of my new 2 hour time limit on her television watching. I am really unhappy about having to do this since it is summer time and it’s suppose to be fun carefree times, isn’t it? The day did not go well, there were lots of shouts about how unfair I am and about how bored she is, the list goes on. We had a later than usual dinner tonight and she decides to go down and watch her last ½ hour of T.V. with her favorite new show. I set the sleep timer on the television and head back upstairs to put the baby to bed. I’ve never used the timer and I wasn’t sure I did it right but while I was putting child number 2 to bed I hear stomp, stomp, stomp up the stairs. She comes into the bedroom, sulking, “I wish you never gave me times on my shows.” We now have another hour until her bedtime, oh uh, what’s ahead for mama? Our usual routine for this time of night, she’s downstairs watching T.V. while mommy is up cleaning up the kitchen. Well with no T.V to watch she only has me to watch. At first I was getting frustrated with her being underfoot and asking question after question about nothing, but then she asks “can I help you?”
Help?, really!, "Sure, that would be great." So I get the sink ready for her to do the dishes that cannot be put in the dishwasher and she gets to work. We work together and get a whole whack of dishes clean, and had fun doing it. It was a wonderful way to end this dreadful day.
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