[If you find my rambling on and on about my kids dreadfully uninteresting, I hope you'll just skip to the end and watch the video, because I'd hate to think you missed out on this delightful and very eclectic video because of all my words!]
When my children are with me, we never watch TV and only very occasionally watch a movie. They seem okay with that. Our life is pretty full, anyway, as my children are only at my house during the week and school and related things like homework fill up a lot of the time.
We have a big yard with a tire swing (thanks to my Mom and Dad). We live on a brick road with a mansion at the end, and my kids think it is great fun to race to the mansion. (Incidentally, living on a paved brick road with lots of old houses, some of them quite rundown, and a mansion at the end gives warm fuzzies to my eclectic heart.) My girls have Littlest Pet Shop toys that they can play with for hours. My boys have trees to climb (I know that sounds sexist, but, honestly, I promise you, I haven’t forbidden my boys to play with Littlest Pet Shop or my girls to climb trees and sometimes they do do those things together.) We have fabulously black oily dirt that my youngest two children love to wallow and dig in.
In general, then, my kids don’t seem to miss TV or computer. My youngest will occasionally come and beg me to let her play Typing Tutor (there’s a grocery store data entry game, and every time you type in the wrong price, the food falls splat on the floor, so it doesn’t really matter that she can’t type, and, to be honest, she doesn’t even try, because she’s having too much fun making the food fall on the ground!) or “the Map Game” (Click on All States for her favorite animated version). But, for the most part TV and computers are not a big part of our life.
One of the implications of that is that when I find a YouTube video to share with them, they love it and will usually ask to watch it several times. This past week, I found a shareable video at Ray Fowler’s blog. My kids love it so much, they have probably asked me to play it 18 times over the past few days. Right before they go to bed, they’ll say, “Can we see that video again?” I like it too and don’t mind at all. It’s pretty funny to do the math and realize that, since it is just over one minute long, that if we’ve watched it 18 times, we’ve still watched under 20 minutes of TV this week 
We’ve had a lot of fun figuring out what our favorite parts are and why we like them so much–this part is cool, I like that person’s voice, the other part makes me feel good. For me, the whole thing is such a wide and wild variety of novel and interesting thing that it gives me more of those eclectic warm fuzzies every time I watch it. Bottom line, it makes us feel good when we watch it. Which is maybe scary in what it says about us, or maybe wonderful to have a feel good fix that makes all of us smile so big, is free, nontoxic, and conversation-inducing. (I’ll take the last option )
So here’s the Hit of the Year for our TV Deprived family:
that, my friend, was some great stuff. i also loved hearing about your tv-deprived family and i have to say i was pretty jealous. i always wanted to ditch our tv when our kids were growing up (actually, i’d still love to do that) but my husband is a sports freak and would have none of that.) i’m willing to bet your kids are going to think fondly of this aspect of your lives.
when i was about thirteen years old, our tv broke just as we were going on christmas break from school and my parents couldn’t afford to have it fixed because of the extra christmas expenses. i was completely horrified at the thought of no tv on our break, but it turned out to be the best christmas vacation ever. we played board games and played outside, and all kinds of other things. i’ll never forget the feelings of depression and disappointment when that tv repairman came to fix the tv. *sigh*
Thanks, Terri, for sharing your story (I love hearing other people’s stories, and it is fun to me when mine prompt someone else to tell one of theirs.) I should say that my kids do watch a good bit of TV and play computer games at their Dad’s house on the weekend. At first it was kind of a tension and hard to adjust to not having it here.
We had some talks about dopamine and how the “feel good without exerting effort” from TV and computers does make it hard to withdraw when they switch to doing without. They seem to have adjusted better now and not resent what they don’t do here. I didn’t try to turn it into a battle, and now they just accept what they like here and what they like there, and separate it out as two different worlds. It’s sad to me to have to say that, even while I’m grateful that they seem to be coping.
It was funny. The other day we were playing Apples to Apples. The adjective was “cheerful” and my five year was judging which of the nouns the others had chosen was most cheerful. One of the choices was “video games”. As my one son pondered the options (and he does so very intensely and verbally, which is a hoot to listen to), my 12-year-old spoke up and said, “Actually video games aren’t cheerful, because they leave you grumpy when you stop playing them. And then nothing else is fun afterwards, in comparison, not Legos, not playing outside….”
I had to smile, because we’ve talked about it a lot a while ago, and he recalled the conversation pretty accurately (even if his purpose was to try to talk his brother out of choosing the “video game” card in hopes that HIS card would be the one chosen
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i remember you mentioning that tension between what happens at your house and what happens when they’re at their dad’s. that’s a tough situation. sounds like they’re coming through it pretty well though. your place sounds like every kid’s dream.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Terri. I don’t know about every kid’s dream. There’s too much “real life” thrown in there with the verbal snapshots I put up here on my blog…. These are individual photos, but not the whole big picture.
Struggling with burnout and realities of single momming, I tend to feel pretty acutely how not with it I feel in the day in and day out of parenting. I tend to hope that the “snapshots” and individual things I can do or be along the way will outweigh all the things I can’t be or do so many days. But, some days I’m not too sure.
All I can be is me, and some days that, only weakly. But the thing is, I am me. (To quote Martin Luther rather loosely and out of context “I can be no other” ) And so I pray, “Lord, let that be okay, and please, make up the difference, big time.”