Cruel Mother Enforces National Pastime Prohibition (and it ain't baseball!)

It’s National TV Turn-Off Week, and the Waters Family is…well, turned off by this strenuous exercise of restraint and renewal. But we’re participating anyway, because Mommy is in charge!

We don’t normally watch a lot of regular TV, but we do DVD our way through many-an-evening—Little House reruns, Harry Potter snippets, Little Einsteins and other sing-song fare we can “enjoy” several times before we enjoy returning them to our local library. Honestly, I’d guess about 3-4 hours of “screen time” per kid, per day (including computer games—PBSkids.org for Ben and Pearl, Webkinz.com for Vi).

Most of the stuff we watch is arguably educational, engaging or otherwise edifying, especially when we discuss what’s happening and why, as we often do. On-screen characters and scenarios make their way into off-screen play and everyday conversation. My dear friend Jean stopped by from London the other night and experienced a common occurrence with Ben: He pulled up a chair to bend her ear about the merits and vices of various Star Wars characters. “Count Dooku is a bad guy—he has a red lightsaver; Han and Luke are good guys—they have blue lightsavers. Jar Jar doesn’t have anything to fight the bad guys, but he’s really funny.”

I’m not truly worried about television’s effects on our youngsters. They seem to be thriving, our household is (mostly) happy, and—hey—I watched too much TV as a kid, and I turned out OK. Even so, this is our third spring banning the boob tube for 7 days straight, and it’s a breath of fresh air. It’s a break in our routine. It forces us to come up with other things to do: At this very moment, Vi is upstairs in her room, racking up minutes for her fourth-grade reading competition. Ben and Pearl are perched on chairs at the kitchen sink, thoroughly soaked and soapy, discussing (what else?) the merits and vices of various Star Wars characters: “I’m the Emperor!” Ben declares in his scratchiest, scariest pre-K voice. “My get to be Darth Vader!” pipsqueak Pearl chirps enthusiastically. (Why are they role-playing evil characters? Hmmm…maybe I should be more concerned about their moral development.)

Will is missing the fun, experiencing a TV-free adventure of his own. After a few days of conferencing in our nation’s capital, he was supposed to land in Flower City later tonight. However, no planes will fly out of foggy New York tonight, he called to tell me, so he’s (ugh!) riding the Greyhound back to nearby B-Town. May the Force be with him. (I doubt their seatbacks feature flatscreens.)