500 or 15: Television

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500 words or 15 minutes (whichever comes first) on my topic of the moment. This moment is…
Television. Aaargh. I love a couch potato moment as much as the next gal, but this latest Juice Box Jungle video got me thinking. How do I “use” the boob tube with my kids? And, is it intentional? Or, do I just default to their love of Elmo and my own need for THEIR entertainment.

My boys love their movies: Charlie Brown, Dora, Elmo, Barney, Winnie the Pooh – the academy award nominees of toddler land. Every day, they take turns choosing the first “movie” to watch when we get home from day care. I’ve found this hour or so of DVD time to be a great way for me to keep my sanity at the dreaded “transition hour.” You know the one, the hour between work and home, daycare and home, hungry and filled, outside and inside and so forth.

When everyone comes home after long (and mostly fun) days, there is sometimes no rest for weary Mommy and Daddy, so our solution has been a little DVD time. We alternate who gets to pick the movie first and they all settle in to bean bag or chair or couch with juice and milk in hands. Sometimes they stay there glued to the action and sometimes they opt for cars and trucks and random storytelling with the show in the background. And, sometimes even Hub and I come running not to miss our favorite funny parts. But, the movies give the grown-ups a chance to say “how was your day” and give the Mommy a chance to get dinner started with maybe a little less multi-tasking. Mind-numbing qualities aside, to the credit of kid programming producers everywhere, the experience really has taught my bunch a lot about everything from how toilet paper is made to who Abraham Lincoln is to how to act like a monkey. (Wait, we didn’t really need any training for that. They popped out with the knowledge already in hand.)

As for regular TV programming, realistically we don’t watch much at our house, at least not the cable and network kind. Being that I have one big sports fan and two (or three, lest we ignore Title 9) little sports fans in training at my house, ESPN does get some air time as well as Fox Sports South and whoever else might be broadcasting live baseball or SEC football.

The main thing that keeps us away from the standard programming and the big concern I have with even sports broadcasting is the commercials. They regularly confuse and scare my just-shy-of-4-year old while my just-shy-of-2 ½ year old is blissfully unaware, at the moment. When we watched the Super Bowl this year, we COULDN’T watch it for reassuring Little Drummer Boy. We finally ended up turning it off. (You can experience my sleep-deprived rant on the issue here.) I’m all about mastering the remote for programs that show my kids things I don’t want them to know until they’re 30, but even with sports or kid-friendly programming, advertisements are still the wild-card.

So at our house, sometimes it’s a toss-up between our favorite dinosaurs and monsters or our favorite teams, and we’re all slowly learning that since we “only have one TV,” (I know, it’s shocking!) “we have to share!” When dinner’s on the table and it’s time for family time, usually there’s a rush to see who can turn OFF the tube first. I guess that’s something.

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