I have never owned a television. I've lived with the televisions of housemates, but never my own. When we got married, it took MHH and me about half a minute to agree that we weren't going to have a television. The reasons against were too many to count.
I now have one more. Since this bedrest thing, since I haven't been able to sit up enough to do much knitting/blogging/anything, I decided to subscribe to Netflix to keep myself from going stark raving mad. I put the DVDs in my laptop and I can watch them in bed.
On Friday, I went to the midwife and came back feeling like I really, really needed to be lying down. MHH took Barak out for a walk before Shabbos, so that I wouldn't have a small person climbing on me while I tried to be good. When they got back, Barak came running into my room and found--Imma in bed, watching a movie on the computer.
Now, before I continue, I need to point something out here. Barak LOVES books. We have books all over the house and he has a good collection of board books in addition to whatever we have out from the library. He goes to bed with a book and naps with a book. You can nearly always talk him out of doing things you don't want him to do by offering to read books. Books, for Barak, are very, very big.
Okay, so, back to Friday. Barak climbed up in bed with me and my computer. It was half an hour till Shabbos, and MHH had a lot to do, so he asked if it was okay to leave Barak with me. Fine, I said. Barak snuggled up against me, and after a quick check behind the laptop screen to see if the little people on the computer were visible back there, he settled in to watch the last 20 minutes of what I was watching. If he saw an animal, he told me; if he saw a baby, he let me know that too. He was totally fascinated. And then it ended.
"More!" he pleaded. "No, Barak, it's all done," I told him. "No more."
"Watch! More watch!"
"No, it's all done. Do you want to read a book? Go get me a book, and I'll read you a book."
And here, in three words, is why we will never, bli neder, have a TV. Barak's response:
"No read! Watch!"
3 comments:
Oh, I feel your pain! We have one TV in the house and I swore that my kids would not be addicts, but my husband does like to watch and you can guess the rest. They are both good readers (now 11 and 13), but most of the time they'd rather watch which kills me. Given this experience, here is what I won't compromise on: NO video/computer games of any kind. NO cable. People say that your kids have to live in the world and you can't protectthem,there is good stuff on cable too etc., etc. Well, it's hard enough to keep the junk and the sex and the insidious messages for girls on regular tv out of their grasp. I am simply not willing to let them watch much of what there is on cable and I don't want to have to police it. What are the results. My kids are creative and imaginative. They still play together for hours putting on elaborate costume dramas of all sorts. They draw and think and yes, read. Stick to you guns! (by the way, I never allowed those either. I certainly sound a lot bitchier and uptight than I really am. I have happy, sweet -most of the time-kids, so much so that I'm actually loving their pre-teen years.) Good luck with the bedrest and with the baby. I'll be checking in.
Wendy
Yup. Although, they get up to 1 hour of screen time twice a week (not in my house) when I'm working, but it's mostly secular kid videos - Sesame St., Barney (ack!), and Blue's Clues. I've given up on fighting it, because we have no TV (not even a VCR or DVD player) in our house.
But my 8 YO (boy!) loves to curl up with a good book, and the others still love their bedtime story/chapter with Mommy.
(good thing he doesn't know about milanos, huh? Those memories die hard too. : ) )
I definitely understand your stand on "no TV," but I wouldn't be too panicked about not watching any more movies in Barak's sight or anything extreme like that. If he hasn't seen much in the way of moving images on screens, he's bound to be intrigued by it the same way as with anything else that's new and exciting. Everything in moderation...
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