My children don't watch television, sort-of.

What's going on here?

We don't have TV in our house.  We have a TV, but don't watch television.  Confusing?  Let me explain.  We turned off the cable almost 3 years ago and haven't looked back since.  At first I really missed my DVR, but without the constant drone of television I found that I had much more free time.  That first year I actually read 145 books.  Really, and those were grown-up books not children's stories. ;)  My daughter was 1 at the time and when she went to bed (or was napping) I'd read and read and read.  Let's just say my house got a bit messy and I was often tired as a result.

Since the reading had become a bit obsessive I scaled way back after that year and read much more moderate amounts.  Since having baby #2 I'm lucky if I can read the newspaper (and I only get the Sunday paper, ha) or a magazine.  I have plans to start up reading when this baby is one again though.

But I digress, back to the TV.  So we still watch shows and movies, we just do it on our time and in our way which is usually on a laptop.  We have a streaming Netflix subscription and sometimes rent movies online.  We also find shows through online players which the big networks have.  For the 4 year old I find her shows on Netflix or on DVDs, especially ones we get from Swap a DVD.

The main benefit to not having live television is not having commercials.  I feel strongly about limiting my children's exposure to the messages encouraging them to buy-buy-buy.  Especially since young children do not know the difference between a show and a commercial, it is all real to them.  I also naturally want to limit their exposure to violence, profanity and gender stereotypes.

So you may ask, why do I let them watch the TV at all?  Sigh.  Good question.  With my first child I had fully intended on having no television for her at all until at least 2 years old.  However, a set of Baby Einstein videos was gifted to us and one evening in desperation (cooking dinner anyone?) I popped one in and put her in front.  Turns out she loved it.  The simple images (babies, animals) and classical music were soothing to her and did not seem too harmful to me.

So here and there I let her watch one.  I added Baby Signing Time to the repertoire as well as Praise Baby.  When she was three I started letting her watch parts of shows on Netflix occasionally (like when I needed to shower) and that brought The Wiggles and Word World into our home.

She saw her first movie in a theatre at the age of three.  It was an IMAX 3-D presentation of Hubble (about the Hubble telescope).  Amazing film by the way, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio and we all loved it.  Then this last summer I took her to some of the movies at Harkins Summer Movie Fun (10 films for $7).  Now that she's four we go the the drive-in as a family and rent movies for home use as well.

However, although we've loosened up the rules on watching shows she still only sees about 20-40 minutes of a video or show on average per week.  And the baby, well I just started pulling out the Einstein and Praise Baby videos again for her.  She's not too interested at 7 months but will watch for a few minutes here and there.  I'll try to keep it to 1-2x a week for her as well.  But it is a bit harder with baby #2.  Am I right? ;)

Here are my girls watching a Baby Einstein video last week.  Judge if you will but they are pretty cute.  For now I'll keep monitoring and limiting their viewing but here and there I'll let them see one on our TV that doesn't have television. ;)