TV Time

Back in March I decided we no longer needed to have cable because, quite frankly, we were watching tv too much. I am not a tv kind of girl, so this wasn't a problem with me, I didn't do any tv watching except for American Idol, which wasn't really that good this season anyway. The problem was my husband and children. I view tv as a way to completely waste time. So much more can be accomplished without tv and there is so much to be done, so why waste away the time where we could be accomplishing so much more. So I cancelled our cable subscription (which we had only had for 1 year and the introductory price expired). It was an adjustment. I had used the tv to entertain my little ones as I was going through pregnancy. Now I had to step up, or at least get up, and pay attention to them. That's not a bad thing, either. My older kids took about a month to adjust and then movies were sufficient. Evan still has not adjusted and has figured out Hulu and other Internet based tv sites. But his view on tv is not the same as mine. He thinks reading a book and watching tv are about the same thing - both forms of entertainment. Of course he doesn't read like I do and I don't watch tv like he does, so we agree that we have a difference of opinion.

As summer started, I had to come up with a plan. Although we didn't have tv, we do have movies. And I didn't want my kids to waste away their summer sitting in front of the tv. So I came up with a plan:

If their room was cleaned with their bed made, each day they got an automatic 60 minutes tv time. Anything else had to be earned, minute for minute reading for tv. And, reading the scriptures got them 2 minutes for each 1 minute read.

And you know what? It worked! Taneal read the entire Fablehaven series this summer along with several other books. Camie read so many of the Warrior books that she is begging me to buy her more. I have always paid my kids $.01/page to read. When my kids were coming to me almost daily saying I owed them $3 or something like that, I just grinned. And when we totalled up tv time earned, as shown in the picture, and they had earned well over 17 hours, I was again a very happy mom. They were using some of their tv time, but spending much of their time reading.

I may not have had a lot of successes in parenting over the last 9 month because I have felt so lousy, but this tv time thing this summer made me feel so good. I love to see my children engaged in a good book. And when I see my children sitting in front of a tv, usually guilt creeps through me. But this time there was not guilt because their rooms were cleaned, they had read their scriptures, and they had earned the privilege to be sitting there.

And other things changed. The fighting drastically decreased. Their imaginations opened up and they relearned how to play. They started playing with each other again. They spent hours after hours playing with the doll houses, building with legos, playing games, and playing dress-ups. A lot of the normal complaining about helping out around the house went away. They didn't get bored. And we played this summer. Camie told me the other day, "Mom, this has been the best summer ever!"

I think we will have to continue with earning tv time next summer.