TV at our house

I was asked to write a blog post about favorite kid TV shows and I had to laugh.   I'm not going to be much help when it comes to kid shows -- we pretty much keep the TV off at our house when the girls are awake. I know that there are a lot of great educational shows available, but my husband and I simply decided that we didn't want the TV to be a focus at our house. Karis is three years old and has learned all the basics easily from books and puzzles.

Every now and then Karis will wake up from a nap on the weekends and find her Daddy watching a tennis match or basketball game, but after snuggling for a minute, she is usually asking him to read to her instead. I have, however, let her watch a Praise Baby or Cedarmont Kids music DVD on 2 different occasions when she was utterly sick and miserable and needed distraction. She absolutely LOVED both of them and I would gladly recommend them both. However, please keep in mind that we have only watched them once so I can't promise that they would not get annoying if watched in repetition :) 

We have also on occasion let her watch a short, funny YouTube video about silly puppies or kittens or a familiar musical clip (like the Sound of Music train station clip). But once again, it is usually only when she is hurt and would benefit from a quick distraction or for short educational purposes. (For instance, when Karis first started soccer, the coach asked her to walk like a penguin and keep the ball between her feet. She had no concept of a penguin, so when we got home, I pulled up a quick You Tube video to show her.)

I don't want you to think that we are ridiculous about our no-TV policy because we really don't treat it as a big deal. If there is an historical event or a major sports game on, we will turn the TV on for a while. But it doesn't happen regularly and we usually don't just sit in front of the TV to watch it; we go about our normal routines and just catch what we can. And we definitely do not make a big deal about TV elsewhere. My girls see the TV on all the time at relatives' and friends' houses, restaurants, etc., and do fine with it.

I have to be honest and admit that because my girls have early bedtimes (Karlie, 6:00 and Karis, 7:00), my husband and I do enjoy watching TV in the evenings after they are asleep. We do not pay for cable but get a surprising number of channels through the free digital box. Once the girls are older and staying up later, however, I'm hoping that we will kick the habit and do family activities instead :)

So how long will we keep the TV off? To be honest, we haven't really set an age or a time. It is just one of those things that we will figure out as we go. I really doubt that we will ever get into the habit of watching regular shows with them. But as they get older, I think it will be beneficial to watch different things with them to discuss what they see and help them learn to evaluate media with a Biblical perspective. And I'm sure that in the future I will greatly utilize the educational aspects of DVD's and the internet.