Life Without TV?
We are considering getting rid of the TV. Well, not the DVD player or the actual TV set. Just the live television coming from our satellite dishes. Arp has suggested getting rid of it several times in the past, but I’ve always resisted. It is such a vice for me, especially since I spend so much time breastfeeding every day. I briefly considered ditching the TV when I was pregnant with J, but I knew from our experiences with M that a nursing infant would require me to be stuck in a chair for quite a lot of hours per day. And after J was born, that did turn out to be true – I am glad that I had the TV to entertain me at least some of the time. (Don’t get me wrong – I love bonding with J, looking into her eyes, enjoying those nursing moments too. But heck, you can only gaze into your infant’s eyes so many hours per day until you are dying for some other stimuli!)
Now that J is a little older (18 months) and not nursing quite so many times per day and for quite so long each time, I am thinking that maybe now is the time to do it. There are so many projects that I have that I never get to do, and I wonder if the time I spend watching TV could be better spent. If I didn’t watch TV, maybe I would get those kitchen curtains made, do the knitting and crocheting I have planned for Christmas, or read one of those homeschooling books that I have on my library list.
I’m also a little worried about the effect TV is having on M lately. He definitely watches way more TV than I ever imagined I would let him. I feel bad that my standards have slipped. So far we have mostly avoided having M watch TV that has commercials, but the few times he did were horrifying. After just a few commercials, I saw him pointing at the screen saying, “Mom! I want that!� I definitely don’t want that to continue!
But before I take the next step, I need moral support. I plan to search on the internet for stories of other families that has taken the “No TV� plunge. Will our lives be better for it? Can I really live without my Law and Order: CI episodes?
Hi Trish,
Our family has not watched TV in nearly two years. We used to subscribe to satellite TV for the educational programs and record them on the DVR to watch at a later time (so that we could skip through the commercials). But we discovered that a lot of the programs we enjoyed were readily available at our local libraries, or could be obtained through interlibrary loans. Most people we know can’t imagine living without cable TV or TV in general, but personally, I find TV too much of a distraction.
There may be a period of adjustment, depending on how much TV you are used to watching, but I can honestly say that “ditching the TV” was one of the best decisions we’ve made in our family. We spend a lot of time reading, writing, playing, cooking, drawing, and learning other things that we never knew how to do before. Plus, if you’re interested in gardening, or raising poultry, or working outdoors, like us, you’ll find that there simply isn’t any time left for watching TV anyway.
In the end, it’s your decision. You may find that you simply can’t live without your Law and Order episodes. Then again, you may be surprised.
I’m really close to pulling the plug. We’ve taken advantage of inter-library loans quite a bit in the last 2 years for books, and have had satellite TV with dvr for the past year. I don’t watch a whole lot myself, but will miss the ‘Engineering an Empire’ series on the History Channel.
However, a quick peek at Amazon shows that a dvd on the series will be released at the end of February, so I could always catch up at a later time. Most of my preferred TV shows tend to be nature or ancient history documentaries, and I haven’t plumbed the depths of interlibrary loan for those yet.
The one show I would like to see would be ‘The Office,’ which, conveniently enough, can be bought from iTunes. The absurdity of it is definitely worth $2.
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