Surviving the Boobtube

So....OUCH.  The reason they coined the phrase "boobtube" in the 1960's is because there was little available on television for intelligent people to watch ergo, watching TV classified you as a boob (I'm not a boob because I just used "ergo" in a sentence).  Good to know, although, it doesn't apply in that way today - even I must admit, there are some amazing things to learn from programs on TV.  Using the phrase "boobtube" as a reference now would most likely mean that sitting in front of the TV all day turns you into a giant, squishy boob.  I can't decide which is worse actually......

Let's just turn it off.  Yes, I'm serious.  My family has been living without cable for over a year - we watch movies but we do not have television at all.  Sometimes it's difficult, yes, we can't watch the news or a basketball game (my husband cries a lot over that one) and there's no cartoons on saturday mornings BUT my children use their imaginations all the time.  They play dress up and write plays and perform them for whoever happens to be at our house, they do craft projects and read books.  Don't get me wrong, we have other means of electronic entertainment - they both have a DS and we have Xbox with Kinect, we're not living like pioneers!   But, I feel like not having TV gives them a sense of self reliance - they have to figure out ways to entertain themselves and they do.  They never come to me and say, "I'm bored!  There's nothing to watch!" which is a huge relief....especially since I know for a fact that I said it to my mother so many years ago!

You don't have to go extreme like we did, just pick a time that the TV is allowed to be on and stick to it, or make it "no TV Tuesday."  I'm not gonna lie, the first week or two is a killer and you might be at the point where you've picked out the box to Guam and called UPS for an estimate on shipping a 50 pound child (or 200 pound man) BUT once everyone gets over the hump it will be fun.  And in the long run that's what we're doing as parents anyway right?  Teaching our children self-reliance so that they can survive without constant coaching?

Maybe give them the right to choose what the family fills that night with instead of TV - you set the boundaries and it will depend on the age of your children on what it all entails.  The easiest is probably board game night - REAL board games: Scrabble, Clue, Scene It.....we used to play Candyland, Chutes and Ladders and Go Fish but kids grow up.....just between you and me - we still do those sometimes too just not as often, there's something addicting about Go Fish.

Recently my six year old son and I built a time machine (You know what I was saving that cardboard box for!).   We made "clocks" out of paper plates on which we had each drawn pictures of places we wanted to go in our time machine.  He drew pictures of the past - mammoths, dinosaurs, early primates, the Ice Age and I drew pictures of the future - cities in the sky, houses on the moon, apes taking over the earth, robots cleaning the house.....That was two weeks ago and not only is he still talking about apes taking over Earth, he's still using that time machine to travel to new places.

I can think of a hundred things to do instead of watching TV - and only one of them requires you to leave your yard.  There are puppet shows, bubble races, tons of crafts, fort building, cloud watching, painting, legos, musical instruments from recycled materials, puzzles, games, baking, reading.....and the one thing that you have to leave you yard for is by FAR my favorite (since I made it up myself!) Treasure Walks.  We have been going on Treasure Walks for years and they never get boring......