No TV-What to do with the time?

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KathyA

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I’ve become increasingly annoyed with the TV in our house and the amount of time it is turned on. I’d like to totally blame DH, but must confess that I use the TV far too much to keep DS#2 (almost 4) occupied while I’m doing other things around the house. DH likes to come home from work, tune into FOX News and leave it there until bedtime. He has been dragging himself away from the tube each evening to play a game of cribbage with me, but the TV remains on as background noise.

I want to propose a ban on TV for Lent this year. What other things could we do as a family/individually to fill that mindless TV void? DS#1 is 17…he may or may not be participating with family time depending on how much homework he has.

Kathy
 
Kathy,
I would caution you to discuss this with dh… he is not a child and is capable of discerning his own lenten sacrifice.

If you collectively choose to give up tv… try a Christian radio station… game night… art projects… family prayer… taking walks…
 
KathyA said:
I’ve become increasingly annoyed with the TV in our house and the amount of time it is turned on. I’d like to totally blame DH, but must confess that I use the TV far too much to keep DS#2 (almost 4) occupied while I’m doing other things around the house. DH likes to come home from work, tune into FOX News and leave it there until bedtime. He has been dragging himself away from the tube each evening to play a game of cribbage with me, but the TV remains on as background noise.

I want to propose a ban on TV for Lent this year. What other things could we do as a family/individually to fill that mindless TV void? DS#1 is 17…he may or may not be participating with family time depending on how much homework he has.

Kathy
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Either individually or as a family, you could participate in various Church activities that take place on week night evenings - Youth Group, Rosary, Bible study, Women’s League, etc.

You could read aloud to one another from classic books.

You could invent and play your own games.

The possibilities are endless … 🙂
 
Ask him to just sit quietly and talk. Remember, it all depends on the approach.
And if you get the TV banned, could you share the steps you took ? 😃
 
We have stopped watching all news on the TV…and this is big, because DH was a FoxNews junkie as well. We still do watch TV, though. I let the little ones watch an educational program while doing one-on-one school with the oldest; we watch movies together in the evening. We used to have two TVs and let the kids watch something in the other room, but we got rid of the second TV.

I would second the suggestion that you talk it over with DH, but in a gentle manner. Maybe suggest a news fast, rather than an all-out-TV ban, since it seems the news is what’s irritating you most. I know it irritated me! 😉

As for keeping your youngest occupied, nearly 4 is an excellent age for learning to “help” with chores around the house! My 4 year old is never happier than when he’s helping us with a chore. so if you have housework to do, let him come along and spend time with you. If you have office work to do, give him a little office of his own, with crayons, paper, glue sticks, stickers, safe scissors.
 
We haven’t had TV in almost 3 years. We do have a TV, and use it occaisionally to watch DVDs on, but have no cable or antenna–so no reception out here in the boonies. We have LOTS to do otherwise…for instance, the internet! 😃 😛 But seriously, we all read more now, play with the kids, and do more involved hobby things–like I cook and bake a lot now with the “extra” time that was spent glued to the boob tube. I think it’s been great for our whole family. When we do watch a movie, we watch it together. It wasn’t nearly as hard to get used to as I thought it would be.
 
Thanks for the ideas so far. And yes, I will gently discuss this with DH… before laying the hammer down! 😛

Yes, he’s an adult capable of making his own decisions regarding Lenten sacrifices. I promise I’ll be nice.

Kathy
 
We have talked about getting rid of our dish for awhile now, we just can’t seem to go through with it:blush: There are shows that we both enjoy and my husband loves sports, but there is so much on that we don’t want the kids to see, even the commercials are terrible.
I think there are a lot of things to do without a T.V…some I can mention…others, you figure it out:blush:
 
happymommy said:
We have talked about getting rid of our dish for awhile now, we just can’t seem to go through with it:blush: There are shows that we both enjoy and my husband loves sports, but there is so much on that we don’t want the kids to see, even the commercials are terrible.
I think there are a lot of things to do without a T.V…some I can mention…others, you figure it out 😊
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We were trying to watch something last night on cable, and there had been some kind of a mixup with the scheduling on that particular channel, but I thought we had accidentally clicked on the pornography channel - I can’t believe what is considered “entertainment” on the regular cable channels for young people, these days. 😊

My husband was even more upset than I was - we switched right away to one of our local channels, and we won’t be looking at that particular channel again for quite a while. I think we’ll stick to the Discovery channel, ACCESS-13, and CBC.

But I can certainly understand anyone who wants to get rid of their TV set, especially if they have children at home.
 
I have a tv, have for all of the 11 years I’ve lived on my own, but have never even hooked up local access. I’ve never missed it, and have netflix for those rare movies I must see, as well as Heroes and Doctor Who. =) I have a child on the way, and I’m not planning to change.

What to do as a family? Play board games or card games! Go on picnics in the park – see what kind of free events your city offers, like concerts and children’s shows and whatnot. Go to the library. Bake cookies! Every Christmas as a child, my mother, sister, and I would bake some kind of elaborate edible Christmas treat – a foot-tall cookie tree, a gingerbread house, etc. You can find year-round kitchen projects like that which are both fun and tasty. And it’s never too early to teach your children how to find their way around the kitchen. =)

Also, think of the money you’ll save between tv subscription and electricity costs! Put aside those savings for something big as a family, like a trip to the zoo or to an amusement park.
 
We have given up TV for Lent for many years. We do usually have a ‘family movie’ on Saturday night though. What we do during the week is read, play board games, go for an evening walk, perhaps start a craft or puzzle. My kids are closer in age than yours and older than 4. When we started this tradition, I did LOTS of reading aloud. Between a nice leisurely dinner, perhaps a walk, and a few chapters of a book like Little House on the Prarie, the evenings would go by quickly.

I will say that we have never been in the habit of having the TV on just for ‘company’ anyway. So instead of all ending up in the family room watching, we congregate in the living room to read.
 
jmcrae said:
We were trying to watch something last night on cable, and there had been some kind of a mixup with the scheduling on that particular channel, but I thought we had accidentally clicked on the pornography channel - I can’t believe what is considered “entertainment” on the regular cable channels for young people, these days. 😊

My husband was even more upset than I was - we switched right away to one of our local channels, and we won’t be looking at that particular channel again for quite a while. I think we’ll stick to the Discovery channel, ACCESS-13, and CBC.

But I can certainly understand anyone who wants to get rid of their TV set, especially if they have children at home.
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We have a channel for kids, it’s great from 6:00am until 6:00pm, then it turns into these teen soap opera’s and they are awful!!! The one day the kids were watching something while I was getting dinner, well I didn’t get in there fast enough…I was shocked at what they had on. Girls with hardly any clothes on, making out with anyone that would stand still. I don’t think my kids even noticed that the program changed, there was just noise coming out of the magic box, but I was upset!
 
Hurricane Ike dumped a tree on our Dish dish, so, we had a choice to make… we did not every turn it back on.

We have rabbit ears for local news/weather (it is a snowy picture, but, it works).

We have NetFlix and make use of the video library at our Parish as well as DVDs from the public library. We read more, talk more, are going to attend a workshop to learn how to make cord rosaries…
 
Sr_Sally said:
We have given up TV for Lent for many years. We do usually have a ‘family movie’ on Saturday night though. What we do during the week is read, play board games, go for an evening walk, perhaps start a craft or puzzle. My kids are closer in age than yours and older than 4. When we started this tradition, I did LOTS of reading aloud. Between a nice leisurely dinner, perhaps a walk, and a few chapters of a book like Little House on the Prarie, the evenings would go by quickly.

I will say that we have never been in the habit of having the TV on just for ‘company’ anyway. So instead of all ending up in the family room watching, we congregate in the living room to read.
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Maybe we will try that this Lent as a test run for getting rid of the dish. We do family night every Friday that the kids really love. After the dinner dishes are done, we play games, do our Bible lesson and then bring out the sleeping bags and camp out in the den. We pop popcorn and watch movies, they are really into older movies…the apple dumplin gang and the parent trap ( the original with Haley Mills!) During the summer we do a lot of outside games in the evening, but now, it’s dark before 5:00 and they have homework and chores, by the time dinner is done it’s time to get ready for bed. Hubby and I sit around watching t.v. In all fairness I tend to cross-stitch while I watch t.v. at night, do I get a pass for at least being creative while being a bum in front of the t.v.?
 
Start a family book club~decide if you want a religious topic or not~even lives of the saints would have something for the 4 y.o. Family community service night~pick an organization in your community and commit to a “shift” for several hours on a given night and work them together. Organize a photo album of your last vacation, family reunion, etc. Kids can help and you’ll have a great keepsake!
 
KathyA said:
I’ve become increasingly annoyed with the TV in our house and the amount of time it is turned on. I’d like to totally blame DH, but must confess that I use the TV far too much to keep DS#2 (almost 4) occupied while I’m doing other things around the house. DH likes to come home from work, tune into FOX News and leave it there until bedtime. He has been dragging himself away from the tube each evening to play a game of cribbage with me, but the TV remains on as background noise.

I want to propose a ban on TV for Lent this year. What other things could we do as a family/individually to fill that mindless TV void? DS#1 is 17…he may or may not be participating with family time depending on how much homework he has.

Kathy
Click to expand...
First of all TURN OFF FAUX (FOX) NEWS! The anger and lies spewed from the likes of Hannity and O’Riley are enough to ruin anyone’s evening!

See… isn’t that better? For news turn to CNN, more balanced (note - no need to watch MSNBC either, it’s the reverse of Fox). But I wouldn’t watch any unless something major happens, just watch the local evening news to find out the weather and any really BIG stories. No need to get all worked up about someone’s “thoughts” on something that really wouldn’t even be a story except that they needed something to rant about.

Now that we are past that try making a rule about TV time. We don’t do it often enough yet ( I want to get to once a week ) but we have nights that there is no TV. We do games or read (don’t do it often because only my kindergartner can read but he reads to the 4 and 2 year olds).

Personally I would love it for my wife to play games with me, she just isn’t a gamer so you have a plus there 🙂 but just ask your husband, “can we turn the TV off? we really don’t need it do we?”

If you guys are like us we get very little time together since we have small children. Tell him you want that time together for just you guys and you don’t want to share him. Often quite alone time leads to other good things in marriage… that don’t require a TV 🙂

Start with maybe every other week and see how it goes, then move it up to once a week. That’s our plan at least for now… it’s going well, slowly but surely!

Joe
 
jwashu said:
First of all TURN OFF FAUX (FOX) NEWS! The anger and lies spewed from the likes of Hannity and O’Riley are enough to ruin anyone’s evening!

See… isn’t that better? For news turn to CNN, more balanced (note - no need to watch MSNBC either, it’s the reverse of Fox). But I wouldn’t watch any unless something major happens, just watch the local evening news to find out the weather and any really BIG stories. No need to get all worked up about someone’s “thoughts” on something that really wouldn’t even be a story except that they needed something to rant about.

Now that we are past that try making a rule about TV time. We don’t do it often enough yet ( I want to get to once a week ) but we have nights that there is no TV. We do games or read (don’t do it often because only my kindergartner can read but he reads to the 4 and 2 year olds).

Personally I would love it for my wife to play games with me, she just isn’t a gamer so you have a plus there 🙂 but just ask your husband, “can we turn the TV off? we really don’t need it do we?”

If you guys are like us we get very little time together since we have small children. Tell him you want that time together for just you guys and you don’t want to share him. Often quite alone time leads to other good things in marriage… that don’t require a TV 🙂

Start with maybe every other week and see how it goes, then move it up to once a week. That’s our plan at least for now… it’s going well, slowly but surely!

Joe
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Sorry, but CNN is never nor will it ever be on in our house. I think it may be blocked:thumbsup:
But the rest of what you said was good!
 
jwashu said:
First of all TURN OFF FAUX (FOX) NEWS! The anger and lies spewed from the likes of Hannity and O’Riley are enough to ruin anyone’s evening!

See… isn’t that better? For news turn to CNN, more balanced
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:eek: You’ve obviously been brainwashed by the liberal media. :tsktsk: :hypno: You need therapy. Turn on Glenn Beck and listen to him until you can take off your green-colored glasses. :cool: The only thing balanced about CNN is the liberals and the socialists…same amount of each. :ouch:
 
hate to rain on everyone’s parade, but there is NO good, unbiased news network in existence, they are all circus acts no more,so there’s no sense in even going there with an argument to one or the other. If you think there is, you too have been brainwashed.:twocents:

Back to the OP.

I have always been a scrooge with my kids about TV. The rules were no TV during the week, too much of a distraction, and 1 hour daily on the weekends OR 1 hour of computer time, not both.

I shared your disdain for news and good Lord above the commercials!!! If I wasn’t there to FFW all the commercials I had no idea what they might see. The news, and the constant arguing, the accusations, the rhetoric, and the LIES they spew, is honestly like inviting a toxic waste dump into your home to spend some time with you. After awhile it makes everyone stink with attitude.

That’s how it was until my son broke out TV about…4 months ago now…and I haven’t’ replaced it.

YOU’D BE AMAZED AT ALL THE THINGS KIDS FIND TO DO WHEN THERE IS NOT TV.

I cap that because I can’t believe it myself, it’s that amazing. Even going from very little TV to none, there has been a huge difference.

Honestly, I don’t have to find much for them to do, they usually are telling me what they are going to do. They now have time to imagine, and plan, and think in ways they just wouldn’t have before. It’s been especially good for my DS who has autism and struggles with keeping his attention and pretend play. Without that over stimulation of TV he’s starting to blossom. He joins the girls in their play without prompting. He watches them for longer periods of time, it’s just great.

There was another thread about keeping toddlers busy, you may want to check that out for some good ideas.

How about longer term projects? Making something for Easter…even starting on making some Christmas gifts or decorations, writing to a pen pal, my DD loves to look through the Little House on the Prairie books to get idea too.
 
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