Home without TV?

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Corinne

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My husband and I are a newly married young couple who recently moved into our first home. We signed up for the internet, but we have opted out of signing up for cable tv. We’ve been pretty discouraged about the amount of “junk” and un-Christian attitudes portrayed on tv. We are starting to lean toward getting rid of the tv entirely. We don’t have any children yet, but I can’t help but think that it would be better for our future children to just not have tv at all. I like the idea of spending our evenings playing games and talking rather than sitting in front of the television. Has anyone else tried this? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
 
hi corinne!

my husband and i are 24 and have been married for about a year. we, too, have chosen not to have cable tv for our home–first for financial reasons and secondly for the reasons you stated above.

at first i was like, oh my gosh…no cable? whatever will i do without mtv? the answer…plenty.

my husband and i spent most of the spring and summer outside in the evenings, playing softball, soccer, frisbee and kickball with neighborhood children. we are quite popular 😉

but we also spend a lot of time laying around our living room floor, talking endlessly…which we love to do. we often have picnic dinners on our living room floor, or grill outside and take a blanket to relax upon.

my husband has always said that we will never, EVER have a tv in our bedroom, no matter how much money we make. he is very against what it promotes.

there are times when a certain show is on that i will hear about from my sisters or friends, and i’ll feel a little frustrated that i can’t just flip on the tv and watch, but…overall it’s saved us a lot of money and time spent elsewhere, more productively.

we both have “projects” that we work on. household stuff we want to get done, volunteer work, little hobbies we’ve take up both together and individually.

it’s been fun!
 
We have a TV but no cable. I didn’t want my kids watching the junk on television. We never watch TV during prime time, but my kids do watch PBS kids in the late afternoon some days. We also might watch something special together. The other night we let our second-grader stay up for the debate, but he got bored after 45 minutes and went to bed.

We read books and play games in the evening. My husband doesn’t get home from work until 7:00, so we eat late and then the kids get a bath from and there isn’t much time after that anyway.

I have a good friend who doesn’t have a TV at all. Her kids are so good at entertaining themselves because they also don’t have a computer at home. They are both Ph.Ds and computer savvy, but they don’t want their kids becoming zombies. I think they are right.

We are planning on limiting the computer time for our son as well. As a teacher, I saw some kids who came from homes without TV, and as a rule, they were much more imaginative than most kids.
 
I really miss the show Trading Spaces which is on cable. I watch it every time I visit my sister on a Saturday. I also miss having CNN when I miss the news in the evening and there is a big event, but I get a newspaper and listen to NPR every day. We also loved American Movie Classics, but oh-well, I think we are better off now.
 
I’m also a newlywed with no TV. We have a TV set but no cable whatsoever. All we have is the DVD player which suits us just fine. We get our news online and most of our entertainment comes from the internet - like posting on message boards 😃 The choice was an easy one to make since cable is freaking expensive here. I miss TV very little, the only thing I wish I could still watch are the Notre Dame football games (though not so much this season 😦 )
 
I was raised without a TV til about age 15, more for financial constraints than anything, I think. At the time, of course, I thought it was a terrible curse that my parents had wrought upon my life. Now, I am so glad that they didn’t permit us to waste countless hours sitting in front of a box!

As a single woman living alone, I sometimes missed the “companionship” of a TV, if you can call it that, but found myself listening to the radio when I needed to hear another voice.

Now that I’m married (just over a year), I am so glad we don’t have a TV–the internet alone provides enough competition for our free time!

What you will begin to notice after a few months of zero-TV watching is what an assault on your senses, and an insult to your intelligence even a few minutes of viewing becomes. I remember feeling almost physically ill at the graphic violence that was advertised during a regular promo for an upcoming show. The “in-your-face,” “sex-sells-everything” is still so startling to me when I happen to be somewhere that has a TV…and it seems to just wash over everyone else, who can sit there without blinking.

Go a while without TV and you will also realize what poor quality most scripts are, from sit-coms to local & national newscasts.

What is that saying…You can cook a frog to death if you put him in a pot of water & gradually turn up the heat, but plop him in a pot of boiling water & he’ll jump right out and save his life?

I say, “Go for it!” 👍
 
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StephanieC:
Go a while without TV and you will also realize what poor quality most scripts are, from sit-coms to local & national newscasts.
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I can’t agree with you more. Have you ever taken inventory of all the shows you watched as a kid and then thought about the quality of it? Just exactly how did I stand the Brady Bunch?:whacky:
 
We’ve been married about 5 1/2 years, have never had television (cable or antenna), however my husband enjoys movies that he occasionally rents. I however don’t watch them, too violent or sexual. Now that we have two toddler children, I ask him please to not turn on the movies until after they are asleep. I will preserve their innocence at all costs, they’ll encounter enough filth in the public world without piping it into our living room. I do have a few SELECT cartoons they may watch a max of about 1/2 hr, and only if I am with them. I do not use tv as a babysitter, although it’s tempting at times.

In the beginning of our marriage, as another poster said, we talked much more and were more active. I became much more creative and learned new things (read more, learned knitting, crochet, and other creative cooking, etc.). You won’t regret it, keep it up.
 
I don’t know what Witchata has in the way of radio stations, but there are tons of different styles of music. Turn on the radio!

There are so many books to read, and there’s never enough time! a half hour of tv gives you maybe 22 - 23 minutes, and most of it junk. Read a book!

There are so many hobbies, many of which can produce items of quality. Get a hobby! In fact, get two!

There is so much need for prayer in the world. Say the Rosary! Learn to say the Office! Say it with your spouse!

There are so many activities out doors (well, maybe in your part of the country, part of the year). Get out doors! We spend altogether too much time inside.

There are so many poor who need help, and so many organizations looking for volunteers. Volunteer!

I turned off the TV 18 years ago, and I haven’t missed it a lick. On occasion, when I am really bored, I will turn it on, and in less than half an hour, I realize why I turned it off. And I am even more bored then…

But a hint: don’t go around telling everyone you turned it off; no one likes looking in a mirror. Just say, you didn’t watch (whatever program), and change the subject.

Tell them about the music you enjoy; the hobby uyou have; what you did out doors; the most recent book you read…

And if all else fails, take a class at the local Community College!

Get a life! It’s fun! :dancing:
 
Thanks for all the thoughts, encouragement, and ideas! I’m even more excited about giving this a try now. 🙂
 
I don’t have a lot more to add than what has already been said. My husband and I decided not to have a TV when we married. Nineteen years and a 13 year old child later, we still have no TV (or VCR or DVD player). Our daughter is a voracious reader, an accomplished musician, a well adjusted teenager socially, and an extraordinarily gifted student. She is proud of not having a TV and argues against my occasional suggestion that we should get one.

So I would disagree with otm who said not to make a point of telling others. We make a point of wearing our no-TV status as a badge of honor. It is a huge accomplishment, we reap the benefits, and we think others should know that it is both do-able and beneficial.

Plus it is a fascinating study in human nature to see how people react when they learn that we don’t watch TV. It is disbelief, fear at the mere thought of going without TV, probing to see if we really don’t have TV or just no cable, wanting to see us as space aliens (and disappointed that we are not), explaining why it wouldn’t work for them… (Over 19 years, we have heard it all!) Pretty amazing that intelligent, educated Americans are so aghast at the idea of having no TV! (The only ones who cheer us are our daughter’s teachers because they see too many kids who OD on TV.)
 
I’m old! 😛

Gave up cable 3 years ago but stopped watching TV 4 years ago. I DO have a TV – just in case there’s another 9-11 or major local emergency. But all I ever watch are tapes/DVDs. NO broadcast TV.

I cannot tell you what an improvement this has made in our lives. Children are adults and gone now but I believe the worst thing I ever did to them as a parent was to have cable TV (MTV) in the house when they were teenagers.
 
Remember that even if you do have a TV in your home, they all come fully equipt with an ‘off’ button! 🙂
 
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MamaAtHome:
Remember that even if you do have a TV in your home, they all come fully equipt with an ‘off’ button! 🙂
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Yeah, but it is harder to find than a remote with legs… for somne reason people can find the “On” button, but not the “Off” button (even though they are the same). The bloody thing goes on the minute the first person goes in the door, and doesn’t go off until the last one shuts the lights off (and sometimes not then…).

How often have you gone over to someone’s house and found the little machine sitting there by itself blathering on to empty space, no one listening…

Or, how often have you gone into the room that contains that infernal contraption, and it is going full blast, no one in attendance?

I can’t stand the sound of a TV in the background (literally; it makes me a bit hyper), and I go over to some friends house and the *&%$# thing is on, no one paying any attention. If I make the suggestion that we turn it off, I feel rude. And their comment is that their daughter is “watching” it. No she isn’t. She is wandering in and out of the room doing other things. I feel rude in making the request, and at the same time I feel they are rude in leaving it on. ARRGGHH! :mad:
 
No cable in my house either, but I have to admit it is always on.
 
We have our TV for two reasons, The Weather Channel during storms and EWTN.

If our cable provider dropped every other channel, I highly doubt we would even notice.
 
I think rather then entirely giving up on TV - it is better to keep it, and practice disciplined viewing habits, and teach them to your family. I think it is a little extreme to evict it from your family room.

The internet, radio, and newspapers can be equally offensive as a TV. At my house we try not to watch more then an hour or so of TV a day. I like to catch the local news, the O’Reilly Factor, EWTN, and a sports show once a week or so - and a movie occasionally. I would miss these things if I had to give it up and I can imagine a child would be rebelous to the idea. I would prefer to teach children good viewing discipline.
But we spend more time outdoors and in books then we do with TV. It is important to make TV your slave, and not the other way around.
 
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