Day 1 of "No TV Until Joey Turns 2"

We've been weaning ourselves off of TV since we realized Joey was actively watching it. Initially, my plan was to never let him watch TV ever and we wouldn't have it on while he was awake, etc. But while I had held some newborns in the past, I hadn't anticipated how much he was going to sleep the first couple of weeks. So yes, for the last three months, the TV has been on for a lot of the time. Once we realized Joey could not only see the TV but he understood (as much as a 3-month-old can) what he was seeing (he smiles at faces), I decided we'd have to go back to my plan of "no more TV". I picked today as the start date because it's a new month and it gave us about a week of knowing when we'd finish so we could start weaning ourselves off instead of just going cold-turkey. The first day or two of the weaning was interesting but now, it's not really that big a deal. It's not like there's actually anything good on during the day anyway, and whatever we end up missing the airing for, we have On-Demand, Hulu, and Netflix. Seriously, we're fine.

There have been several recent studies about children under the age of 3 and excessive amounts of television (or lots of time in front of a screen watching stuff, DVDs and videos on the computer count, but TV is shorter to type ;) ). The AAP actually recommends no TV at all until age 2. If we follow their guidelines for car seats, why ignore them on TV just because it might seem hard? The studies conclude that children who watch LOTS of TV end up with social, cognitive, and speech delays. There are parents who use the TV as a babysitter for more than a few minutes and don't interact with their child at one of the most important developmental times in their lives. What these researchers are finding out is these kids end up with short term attention span issues, are less likely to be as productive in school later (one study followed kids into the 4th grade--age 10), exercise less, and also tend to be victimized because social skills take practice.

When I was a kid, we were lucky to watch more than 2 hours of TV a day. Typically, on a nice day, we got "kicked out" of the house and told we could come back when it got dark. I'm not sure how some of these parents started parking their kids in front of the TV for hours at a time, but I know that lots of TV never did anybody any good. Joey will watch TV as a toddler, I'm not naive enough to think that he'll never see anything (Dan and I already agreed that Steelers and Redskins games were the exception to the "before 2" rule), and I know how powerful the glow of the screen can be in taming toddlers. But if we start watching ourselves and our habits now, our whole family will be in better shape. I've already been reading a lot more (some out loud to Joey lol) and my current knitting projects are coming along. Most important of all, Joey is happy, healthy, and "chatting" up a storm when he's awake. He found his toes last week and plays with them a lot, he also just started getting into grabbing and holding toys. He can bring his hands (and anything in them) to his mouth most of the time, but he still needs practice. We're doing our best for him and if that means we cut back on TV then that's fine because we were getting pretty sedentary anyway.