Adventures in Parenting

I am posing you with a big challenge today. 

Make today a NO TV day!

That’s right. Have the TV off for an entire day. And yes, you will live through it, I guarantee it!

According to Nielsen Media Research in 2006, the average American home now has more television sets than people! There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said. TV’s are now everywhere – on buses, in elevators, at the supermarket checkout line, in our cars.

Our default position at home is sit on the couch in front of the screen. The average person watches four hours, 35 minutes of television each day, Nielsen said. Time gets away from us, and it does not allow for interaction together as a family.

I am not asking for a whole week or month without TV. Just ONE DAY – Yes, a 24-hour day!

If anyone in your family complains about this, merely tell them just one day is not going to kill anyone. Put it in perspective – it’s only ONE DAY.

What do we do with no TV?

The challenge part of today’s exercise is to be creative and think of some things you can do together as a family instead of watching TV. I wrote a post where I suggested 3 simple activities to promote family time. I am sure you can think of other things to do. Please post your ideas here so we can try them too.

The only rule is, don’t replace TV with the computer. That doesn’t achieve the goal of interacting with each other. However, multiple player video games are allowed, providing if everyone is involved together. My family goes crazy while playing video games together. But we do not allow one-player games.

If you normally watch half an hour or an hour of television, this means that you are spending that extra amount of time with your family. No matter how deficient you may be as a parent, merely spending time together to do something will have tremendous benefits in your relationship with one another.

I bet you wouldn’t have missed out on anything on TV.

Photo by cloudzilla