Too much TV – but things might be okay
Apr 22nd, 2010 by SemiCrunchyMom
We watch too much television here. Okay, the television isn’t on all day, and I try to be somewhat thoughtful about what we watch, but it’s still more than I would like.
I think it bothers me because I often throw it on just to give myself a break; something that I swore I’d never do.
(I swore I’d never do a lot of things before I became a mom…I have learned much since then.)
And I worry about the affect it will have on the kids’ imaginations. Lately a lot of Monkey Boy’s play has centered around the shows he watches. He still puts his own twist on it, but it bothers me. He even occasionally calls his play his ‘videos.’ It makes me shudder.
And then, riding home in the car from the ice cream store one evening, Monkey Boy looks out of the window and says,
“Sky, sky, how beautiful you are.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds an awful lot like poetry to me.
I think things might just be okay.
Ah, yes. I’ve had the same dilemma. However, after awhile, I realized something. Kids are going to pull from every area of their life for their imaginary game. With my oldest, I found that when she didn’t watch TV, she would pretend to be characters in her favorite books. She’d act out entire storylines.
Why do we see this as better? I think there’s something intrinsically hard to swallow about TV. That TV is bad because somehow, we equate it with bad parenting. (And granted, it is passive parenting unless we’re right there watching too). But really, it’s a story with characters and a lesson and so on. Kind of like… books!
Don’t stress it. I don’t think TV is the evil that it’s sometimes touted to be.
And besides, your guy certainly has a lovely way of saying things, it seems.
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