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May 14, 2009
Summer detox
Last night was the season finale of Lost, and I mentally checked this one off the list and breathed a small sigh of relief. I'm a little sad to see our favorite shows end, one-by-one, for the summer, but I'm actually kind of happy, too. I think our list of shows we follow has gotten unwieldy over the past few months and I'll be glad to trade most of them in for longer evenings on the porch, and dinners at the pool.
I tallied up our recent schedule of our nightly TV habit and came up with this:
Sunday: Law & Order: CI
Monday: 24
Tuesday: Fringe AND Law & Order SVU
Wednesday: Lost
Thursday: The Office and 30 Rock
Saturday: Torchwood
One day when I lost my patience with L. for exploding on me because we missed ten minutes of Fang Face he pointed out that I'm always rushing him off to bed on Monday nights before 24 starts. I think one of the reasons we didn't participate in the recent annual TV Turnoff Week is that we just weren't sure Scott and I would be able to uphold our end of things.
Now that summer is around the corner I'm also happy that the kids will be watching less television, too. L., as you all know is a creature of habit--and this definitely extends to TV watching. We don't allow the kids to watch too much television (one hour/day for their "rest" time). T. will happily give up part or all of the hour to play with her neighbor friend from across the street, or if we're out and about, but for L. that hour is golden, and sacred, and carved into stone. We're trying to wean him of this little by little because summer is on its way, and school is out for L. in a little over two weeks. Our neighborhood pool opens on May 23rd, T. is signed up for the swim team, we'll be back to lazy late afternoon swims and dinners poolside and fitting Clue Club around swim team practice will be virtually impossible.
We're dubbing the upcoming summer months as our TV detox time. I can't promise we won't get hooked on a summer show or two (Torchwood's new season starts in July, after all), but I'm looking forward to us all breaking away from the television habit--letting go of those shows we follow for a few months at least--and spending more time outside in the real world.
How much TV gets watched at your house? Are you planning on running your own summer detox program at your house?
Might I suggest DVR? We use that, so don't have to follow a schedule, per se. The only problem being, we end up scheduling more shows to tape and sometimes I get a back log. The kids watch a cartoon in the morning while I finish getting ready. Then we usually let them watch a couple of shows after school, while I get supper around. Every once in a while they'll watch a cartoon before bed, if it's been a particularly chaotic day and we all just need to veg. Their screen time might be an hour, hour and a half a day. They're not really into internet much yet and we don't play video games, so t.v. is about all the screen time they get right now.
I usually end my day with an hour or two of t.v. When I should be tidying my house. I like to sit, relax, and watch a show. I go for American Idol, Grey's Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, and a few others. I like the show Top Chef, when it's on. I also really like House Hunters on HGTV and watch that a couple times a week.
We don't watch as much t.v. in the summer either, but do catch movies here and there. Especially when it's so hot out that we just want to hide indoors.
I've been trying to convince Scott for some time that we need a DVR, but we haven't taken that step yet. Our problem is that we do so much "couch-time" work in the evenings--we tend to sit, side-by-side on the couches with our laptops working, writing, grading...it helps to have a good show to follow to ease the process!
I should add, too, that both kids use the computer quite a bit. L. uses it more that T., but she has recently discovered pbskids.org and funbrain and now can move the mouse around as good as we can!
My kids go to bed so very, very early that the only show they know that I watch is American Idol - because The Girl sometimes gets to stay up and watch the first couple of singers.
"My mom doesn't watch tv," I heard my son say confidentally to a friend the other day. And OH IT IS UNTRUE, but I also have the smug feeling of both having my virtuous cake and also eating it. I don't think this pleasant state will last long, though.
T. is completely oblivious to the fact that we watch anything, because she's usually out like a light at 7:30. But L., our insomniac knows WAY too much about our TV viewing habits.