“Mom, can I watch a show?”

“Not right now, honey.”

“Okay.”

“Mom, can I watch a show now?”

Arrgghh!

When my first son was 3, this very conversation played out day after day in our home.  As you probably know by now, I’m not a big fan of turning on the Plug in Drug while my kids are awake.  (But you bet it’s on for The Office!)  Still, I didn’t want to create some sort of weird craving in my kids by never turning it on.  What to do?

The very first thing for all of us to do, I think, is to figure out where we stand.  Sometimes, as parents, our answers are wishy-washy because our resolve is wishy-washy.  If we “sort of” think we don’t want them to watch too much TV but we also really need half an hour to ourselves, it’s easy to toss the ideals and grab the remote.

But, if we articulate—for ourselves and our kids—how we feel, if we define our stance and understand the why behind our reasoning, suddenly we are rock solid.  And parents, rock solid is where we want to be.  Wishy-washy is for the birds!

I truly believe kids function better with structure (especially if that structure includes a couple of hours of unstructured play), so when my children were young I tried to plan all sorts of regular activities.  Not paid activities, like gymnastics class, mind you, but free activities, like going to the playground, or taking a walk around the lake, or visiting a book store.  (Yeah, that last one did end up costing a pretty penny…so, sort of free, but in the end, not so free.)  Sometimes we also had a paid activity on the calendar (like the aforementioned gymnastics class), but I think its important for kids to have activities where they aren’t being led.  How will they learn to explore, lead, wonder, if they don’t have time to simply wander? 

Okay, back to the TV thing.

I went to Staples and bought one of those huge desk calendars, like my grandfather used to have on his old wooden desk.  Because my son couldn’t read yet, I drew pictures of his daily activities.  One day, I drew a slide and some swings.  (Yep, playground.)  On two of the days, I drew a little schoolhouse.  (Uh huh.  Pre-school.)  And every Friday, I drew a picture of the TV.  On Friday afternoons he could choose any ½ hour video we had and chill out with Bob and Larry or Dora or Blues Clues (back when it was Steve!). 

Outcome:

• Helped him learn the days of the week
• Helped him understand planning and time
• Helped me organize our activities at the beginning of the week
• And the BEST:  If the “When can I watch…” question started, we only had to walk over to the calendar to count the days until Friday.