The Great TV Reducing Challenge Day 1

I have a confession to make: my family watches entirely too much television. There are some days that there is a movie playing in the background from the time we wake up, until my boys go to bed. Not that it is being watched every minute it is on, but I am still now proud of how often it is on. It was not always like this, and I am ashamed of myself for allowing it to get to this point. Currently, my boys are 27 months and 10 months old, and we have been using television in such a fashion since my youngest was about 4 months. The history behind this increase in television watching, was a severely stressful event in our family life, during which time I was very close to postpartum depression. Anything that could help us get through the day was a God sent, though as many of you know - it can be hard to kick the crutch when it is no longer 'needed'.

Which leads me to today, and the decision that our crutch needs to go! Over the next 7 days, I will be posting about our progress. Hopefully by next Wednesday, we will have reduced our screen time to a maximum of one movie a day, and will have developed plenty of ways to get through the days without our television. I invite you to join me if this is something you feel is an issue in your own home, and I hope that you all will hold me accountable to actually reduce our amount of television watching. Please wish me luck, and grant me the peace and serenity to make it through the next week while ridding ourselves of television.

Day 1 - It Begins

Today certainly could have gone better, but I will be easy on myself and admit that it could have been a WHOLE lot worse! Especially when (in retrospect) I might not have chosen the best day/week to begin such a challenge. After waking up, my boys and I played, made and ate our breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, and listened to music together (with some dancing of course!) until Rowan went down for his first nap around 11:00. Things at that point had been a little frustrating, I had to get breakfast ready while attempting to keep Nolan off the counter, dogs from under feet, and at the same time trying to keep Rowan from pulling my pants down or playing with the garbage (ooh the pulling up/furniture cruising stage, what's not to love). Once he was down, Nolan and I did some colouring, and played with our cat. Things went downhill from there.

At around noon, Nolan began trying to get into stuff he knew he was not supposed to play with, which led to some whining and crying that woke Rowan up early from his nap. Not proud of it (and it is hard to admit it, so please do not judge too harshly), but this led to me getting upset and yelling. Their dad and I had been up several times through the night with both of them, and after a couple of days of having too much to do to shower, I was feeling a little less than human this morning. No, this is not an excuse, and I was wrong so apologized to them both for shouting. Rowan was very clearly not ready to be awake yet, but was not interested in laying back down. At this point, lunch needed to be made, so asked Nolan what he would like to do while I cooked. He asked to watch Peter Pan (ugh), but since I had to cook I put it on so I might be able to get lunch finished quicker. This was at around 12:30, so we made it until then without turning it on. Not too bad for the first day, especially when they both ended up in the kitchen about half way through the movie to 'help', and did not watch the full thing. After we ate (from scratch chicken nuggets, ask if you want our recipe), the boys and I danced around and played more until about 3:15 at which time both boys went down for their afternoon nap.

I have snuck on during their nap to type up this post, while wondering how the rest of our day will go. They will be getting up not too long before my husband gets home from work, and he would typically watch a movie with them to unwind from his day while I cook supper. I think that I will allow that to still happen, and aim for that to be the time of day that television is watched, if at all (during the summer we will definitely be outside during that time).

Well, that means that by the end of today, we will have only watched 2 movies (and I will update this if that ends up not being true). Which is not too bad. Still more than I would like, but not bad. It seemed like the day went by pretty quickly, which I am thankful for, but I was pretty stressed out today. I think tonight I will work up a list (and prepare anything I can do beforehand) of things that I can do with the boys tomorrow to keep us busy. I also want to dig out The Hobbit so that I can begin reading it to the boys, and set aside a reading time every day to help get them more into books and not as into the screen.

Are you going to join me on my 7-day television reducing challenge?