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Challenge: Parenting Resolutions

Our 2016 Family New Year’s Resolution: More Imagination, Less TV

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My Parenting/Family New Year’s Resolution for 2016 is pretty simple—cut back on the amount of TV my kids (ages 4 and 5/12) watch to just an hour a day….although honestly, I’d be happy if they would just stop confusing the TV “on” switch for a light switch. It’s gotten to the point where they cannot walk past the TV without turning it on!

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Maybe they think they’re being good Samaritans “Oh no! The TV is off! We better turn it back on!”

Maybe they think our house will self-destruct if the TV’s not on. “Oh no! We must save our home! Quick-turn the TV back on!”

Maybe they think they’re getting an extremely early start on a PhD in TV Studies.

I’m not exactly sure. But what I do know is it’s gotten bad, and we need to fix it!

I should’ve known we were in trouble when a couple years ago my older daughter (then 3) said “TV is important!” when I told her she had watched enough. At the time, I laughed thinking “Well, she’s right. I do have a master’s degree in TV, so who am I to argue?” And I remembered nostalgically how when I was little, I would turn down the volume on the television when the Welcome Back Kotter theme song came on (since that signaled my bedtime). I would stretch out my toy clean up for the whole half hour just so I could get more John Travolta screen time. But what I forgot was that we didn’t have cable yet and even though I may have stayed up too late watching TV, I didn’t watch it all day. I played outside, I played with blocks and built enormous castles, I used my imagination for hours until certain shows came on at certain times. I didn’t just sit in front of the TV zoning out for hours—which I’m very embarrassed to say my kids tend to do if I don’t keep after them.

So, I thought about how we handle other behavioral issues like following directions, getting ready for school, etc and I realized our reward systems in the past have worked pretty well. We’ve done things like the Fuzzy Stick Jar (where you earn a fuzzy stick/pipe cleaner for every task you complete but you lose a fuzzy stick if you do something bad), standard chore charts, and sticker books (same concept as the Fuzzy Stick Jar (you get a sticker for doing your chore but lose a sticker for bad behavior).

Since I want to accomplish two things: 1) stop the automatic TV power-on and 2) encourage them to use their imagination and play with their toys, I decided to go with the reward chart route.

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In the right-hand column I wrote the four basic tasks my kids need to be doing instead of watching TV such as: read a book, color, play with Legos, or play with dolls. Then I wrote “Did Not Turn on TV without Permission.” Every time they do one of the aforementioned activities, I’ll give them a smiley face. Once they receive 5 smiley faces, they can have 1 hour of TV. I know I’ll probably have to tweak this, but I figured this is simple enough to start. I think I might throw in some bonus stickers every time they walk past the TV and do not turn it on because I know that’s going to be a hard habit to break.

I sat down with my girls and we talked about all the fun things they could be doing if they weren’t watching TV. I got them excited again about their toys and their coloring books. I explained how when we start a new year, it’s a good idea to try to make a plan on how to improve ourselves and we call it resolutions. So we decided to work on our TV intake and we gave this potentially scary resolution a big fancy name “Project Imagination!” or “Let’s play with our toys and watch less TV” in layman’s terms. Here’s a video of my older daughter and I discussing our family resolution. As you can see, she’s pretty excited.

Do you have a TV problem in your house? How have you tackled it? I’d love to hear your feedback. Leave me a comment below.

Thanks!

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