When my children
were at home (they are 35 and 32 now, girl and boy,
respectively) we had no television. We were the only household we knew
that
did not have one. Their friends would ask them if we were too poor to
have a
TV! (We lived on an acre in a 10-room house.)
The children NEVER
told me they were bored. Each had a set of activities and interests
that kept them occupied. My daughter did different things at different
ages, but most were creating ways to express ideas. She made board games
for her brother from scratch, decorating the poster base, preparing
colored cards with pictures and words, telling the players what to do,
and designing little objects that were moved around the board by the
players. She made me a bunch of bookmarks with pretty pictures she drew
and a cute saying ("This is where my place just happens to be.")
She learned to use a pattern to sew clothing with minimal help by age
seven. She read at age 4. She built structures out of playing cards,
made cardboard dolls and their paper clothes (her own designs). She
taped her own made-up stories often for the amusement of her brother,
and, with her friends prepared "shows" for me for in-person
performing, or on tape, that were funny, or story-telling, or scary,
etc.
My son did things
like make up a map of the routes around town, which he studied on his
bike (this was at about age 8, things seemed safe then), showing the
courses of all the rain streams and where they went underground. He
dug up small plants to move them into different garden areas to see
if they grew better. He played in small streams watching frogs and looking
for small fish to follow. He spent hours indoors constructing cyclone-like
paths of miniature auto tracks so that he could start a miniature car
at the top and have it get all the way to the bottom without stopping
or missing a curve. He did architecture-like drawings of our home and
garage, etc.
And they both read
and read and read. At our country home we had to get special permission
to take out more than three books per child per weekend, because they
sometimes read as many as six.
Reading was so different
than watching television. If they were engrossed in a book and a chance
came along to do something else (such as go on a foraging expedition),
they knew that when they came back they could pick up exactly where
they had left off, or re-read a bit to capture the mood again. We could
also all sit in the same room quietly reading, sewing, coloring, etc,
and then talk together about something we wanted to share and everyone
could easily put aside the materials and participate. They could do
their activities on the kitchen table, while I prepared dinner, and
share thoughts about their day and the issues with school and friends,
etc. I told them about my workday and colleagues and what things I was
experiencing meant to me. They were not running off to catch a show
that was starting, and no one had to finish his thought within a deadline
set by a TV commercial.
Occasionally they
asked me why we did not have a TV and I told them I thought
the value was not worth what we would lose. They sometimes watched TV
elsewhere and enjoyed it, but they also expressed frustration when friends
would not leave some pointless show to do something interesting. They
often
came home, rather than sit in another house watching television.
My daughter now
watches TV shows with some regularity. My son does not, saying that
he finds it a waste of time. Neither of them thinks they lost out in
an important way by not having been au courant with the sitcoms that
their friends knew. I would recommend that everyone with kids get rid
of TV. If you try to regulate it, you have repeated arguments or discussions
that are a waste of time and energy. Some parents tell me with pride
"Oh, I only let my child watch an hour a day." I hear that
and think that it is likely the child watches elsewhere as well as at
home, that seven hours a week is a full working day each week, and a
very significant portion of the child's free-choices time. Furthermore,
with the horrific and explicit material on television now, an issue
that was not part of the picture in the 70's and 80's when my children
were young, controlling TV-watching by kids requires such vigilance
on the part of parents that a destructive effect is probably unavoidable.
In addition, all the things parents regret having too little time for,
such as preparing real meals, pursuing personal interests, and talking
to their children in depth, become easy. These are the valuable things
to do when raising children.
Sally
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