When we began potty training Lucas, at 21 months, we, for the first time, allowed him to watch movies or kids' TV shows. This got us into a baaaad habit of daily TV watching. Lucas was begging for "Cars" or "Monsters" or "Train" (Thomas) first thing after getting up in the morning! This last week I wanted to make some drastic changes. As soon as Lucas started to whine about watching TV, I would excitedly offer a different activity that we could do together. "Let's build a really really tall tower will blocks!" or "Let's make some pancakes together!"
Sometimes I had to get more creative than others. On Friday as soon as Lucas asked for TV, I said "Woah! Look at that huge squirrel just outside!" (We have a lot of squirrels both in our front yard and in the back). To make things more exciting, I set Lucas up on the window sill, so he didn't have to look through the window screen. We stood there, looking at birds eating seeds and worms out of our grass, and squirrels chase each other for over a half hour. Lucas even climbed down by himself and then brought in a little chair for easier independent access to the "viewing spot." As I washed dishes Lucas described all kinds of things he was seeing. "Mama! One two, one two!" -- yep, there were two squirrels.
The distraction technique really worked. No TV on my watch all week! (He had some special movie time with his dad and grandma a few times.) I must say, the house was less clean this week and it was harder to get some "me" things done, but we had some really fun, sweet mama/son moments.
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4 comments:
aaw, that's really cute. This windowsill thing looks kind of dangerous, though :)
We recently cut out 95% of our day time TV watching. We had gotten really bad about watching way to much...it was always on but it's not like they just sat on the couch watching it all day. Now we only turn it on for our 4 year old's quiet time in the afternoon while the 2 little ones are napping. I agree it's a lot harder to get stuff done but it's worth it!
I constantly battle this! I used the TV to keep Grae preoccupied while I was sick during the first few months of pregnancy, and then again when he was really sick at times during the winter (only thing that seemed to distract him from his misery), and we developed a really bad habit. Crying and tantrums requesting Pingu, Thomas, or Kipper a few times a day, and I would often just give in. We have gone three or four days without any TV and it makes me feel so much better. I have been trying the distraction thing too. And it works. And once summer is here, Grae would willingly spend all day outside, so I want to almost never have the TV on this summer (Grae would spend all day outside right now too, but I hurt and I hate the cold, although the past few days have been nice - Chris spent an hour or two outside with Grae yesterday and had to drag him inside crying to go back out).
aww i love the picture where he was reading the book. i thinkl its the cutest pic u have of him!
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