FREE OF THE BOX
A weekday TV ban is doing the writer and her little fella a world of good.
A weekday TV ban is doing the writer and her little fella a world of good.
ILOVE waking up in the mornings. Even though the hour may be cruelly before the break of day, even if I am exhausted. The Little Man always starts our day with a big bang.
Conversation before 6am usually starts off like a Ferrari going from 0 to 60 in minus 40 to the power of lightspeed per nano second! Who needs claxons when you have articulated verbal diarrhoea coupled with high-octane passion for life jump-starting your neurons.
I used to let the Little Man watch a bit of telly in the mornings to buy some precious time to get breakfast ready and make my cup of Earl Grey before having my ears assaulted with a million questions about the day ahead.
What started happening last year was a real struggle and change in temperament after watching morning toons. It was a mood switcher that sent my happy kid excited about a new day into a stroppy wild thing who got sucked into the vortex of the idiot box and didn’t want to re-engage his brain into the day at hand.
The battle of “turn off the TV NOW and come and get ready” spiralled and really started spoiling our day.
Kids get sucked into passive watching and passive stimulation and it aggravates their brain. It spins them out. So when the input is switched off, they come crashing out of the kaleidoscope tunnel topsy-turvy and very annoyed.
So I did what any sensible parent would do. I told my Little Man that the TV was making him freak out and monster-cranky, which was a really sad way to start the day. I told him we would do an experiment to see if this was indeed the cause and we would ban telly during the week, before and after school, and see if anything changed.
Well, it did. In fact, not only did the Little Man seem happier, he found fabulous ways to amuse himself before school. He reads books to himself, he does art, he simulates ninja wars between the insects and the animals.
We make breakfast together. We talk about “stuff” over breakfast. He relishes making toast for both of us, buttering and jamming his own slices, cracks eggs for omelettes, pours his own milk.
Then we go sit outside on the porch and I check my e-mails for the day while he sits next to me doing something equally important. Incredibly, this new way has given us more time to get sorted for the day. It’s given us more time for US.
He isn’t stressed or rushed and is always ready to go to school to see his friends. I am less grey in the head because I’ve had a peaceful cup of tea and a chance to start the day off without getting frustrated or trying not to engage in battles.
Then an interesting twist happened. The Little Man started to spill his thoughts and ideas and questions to me over breakfast and dinner as there were no telly distractions.
We were discussing everything from the benefits of brinjal for our bodies and what clouds are made of to whether a scorpion is an insect (it’s a terrestrial arachnid apparently).
What started to happen was simply the Little Man engaging with his mind.
I had to, on many occasions, resort to “Googling” answers. Then we had the talk on whether Googling and searching for the answers was like watching telly. We both agreed that if it was topic-specific and we were learning, then it was okay to take 30 minutes out for the “question of the day”. Which brought Youtube into our lives. The other afternoon, we had cooked dinner together and while waiting for it to finish off in the oven, we watched an incredible fourminute clip of David Attenborough and the lyrebird showing how it mimics any sound it hears and how incredible this bird is.
For days now, thanks to my goduncle sending me the link to lyrebirds, my son is obsessed with learning all about them. He thinks they are the coolest thing on the planet. And he’s right. Diego can go, go, go as far as I am concerned, Sir David Attenborough, you can definitely stay, stay, stay.
Children love learning new things. So they can talk about them, show off about them, be inspired. I think it’s totally possible to make “watching” an experience that gives them all of this without the formulaic fantastical cartoons that act like a drug with no benefits!
Asha Gill put her globetrotting life on hold to focus on the little man in her life and gain a singular perspective on the world.