We got rid of TV – well, not entirely

[Note: this is the final installment in a 5-part series on a family experiment to take a break from watching TV]

Tonight when I got home the house appeared dark from the outside.  I thought everyone had gone to bed.  Much to my surprise they all were cuddled on pillows and blankets in the dark, underneath a fort they had built TOGETHER using the dining table.  My youngest son was so excited to show me the fort and include me in the activity.  It was one of those evening that you bet the kids will remember for quite some time.  And it probably would not have happened if we were watching TV.

I feel like we’ve learned our TV lessons and now can go back to watching TV more responsibly.  Here’s the summary of Lessons Learned:

1. TV makes us Lazy.
• We’ve been much more productive
• We’ve been much more intentional about our time
• We’ve been much more creative
2. TV makes us unsatisfied.
• We have indeed heard much less pleading for toys and fast-food.  Or the new (crappy) toy in the (crappy) Happy Meal – even though they generally don’t eat much of the said “Happy” “Meal.”  But we also recognize that we’re constantly bombarded with commercialization, even if we avoid TV.
• TV also makes us unsatisfied with how we’ve spent our time.  Our bodies don’t feel that great after lounging for another hour on the couch, immobile – and that’s unsatisfying.  Moreover, the shows often don’t deliver the thrill and excitement the commercials promise and all of that is emotionally unsatisfying.
3. TV isolates us.
• From each other – “she’s upstairs and I’m downstairs”
• Moreover, it ends conversation for the most part.  We’ve shared much more of our ideas and thoughts since we haven’t been watching.  Tonight Kara and I lay in bed with the lights off for over an hour just talking and communicating.  This would have never happened with the TV on, and hasn’t happened in quite a long time.
• From our kids – we can’t wait to get them in bed, just so we can watch another show about people living their lives – while we miss ours.  Kind’ve sick, really.
• From our neighbors and friends – truth is we’ve been much more social and outgoing when we’re not worried about missing a show.
4. We can all live with far less TV.
• Honestly, when we restricted TV we thought the kids would throw a fit, but they didn’t.  In fact, they’ve been policing everyone else’s TV viewing.  Now, if we were to say, “you can watch a show,” like we did today (Kids’ Monthly Movie Party), they’re all for it.  But since they know we’re not watching it this month, they don’t even ask.  That’s been a huge surprise.  For the first few days I asked Kara “are you doing ok without TV?”  I thought she’d probably have significant withdrawals, but she didn’t.  In fact, she’s been reading a lot more and doing cool stuff with the kids – like visiting the library with the kids and making a week of recipes from kids’ only cookbooks.  I’m really the one that is missing TV the most.  I miss Saturday morning EPL soccer matches, but we can all thrive on much less TV than we were accustomed to watching; probably 10% would be fine.
• We haven’t even watched shows in the car, though this was in previous months a very regular part of our commute.  For some reason the kids just don’t ask.  I wonder how we’ll reintegrate this.  Originally, the rule was that TV in the car was only for out-of-town trips, but the kids slowly wore us down to watching almost all the time.

So now we’re trying to figure out effective ways to reintegrate TV back into our family.

We are making TV available only for small blocks of time on the weekends, and possibly some adult-only time during the week.  If we miss the block of time, we missed it – there are no “roll over” minutes.  Much of the TV we were watching, we didn’t really want to watch (it’s just on for noise) or didn’t really need to watch (like watching ESPN for the scores – it’s far more efficient to just check online).  I like watching the weather in the mornings, but again, it takes far less time to just check my phone’s weather widget.  And, I don’t get caught watching some time-wasting segment that adds nothing to my life and detracts from my day.  We’re also prerecording almost everything so we can avoid commercials – especially in kids programming.

As a result of this experiment, we developed a list of rules for watching TV:

TV RULES:

1. Only watch stuff you really want to.  No passive TV watching.
2. Try to avoid commercials.
3. Try to keep under 4 hours per week for kids and 6 hours for adults.
4. Try to avoid watching shows in the Car
5. Try and watch together.  Make it part of family time.
6. Regularly turn off the TV and all the other gadgets, get outside, meet people, and do something creative – together.

In week 1, we made some predictions or hypotheses about how fasting from TV would affect us; here are the results –

Recap of Hypotheses:

1. Yep, we definitely got more sleep
2. Yep, I’ll definitely do more chores around the house
3. Yep, we definitely felt more productive and less apathetic
4. And an increase in intimacy? I’ll never tell…

If all that sounds good for your family, try it!  It’s better than you imagine, and not nearly as difficult.