inspiring dh to be tv free

[mamaLHK]

i have never been a big tv person, but ever since having ds, i hate tv (sorry i dont have a gentler way to say that!). i guess i look with new and innocent eyes at all the stuff on there and dont see much to recommend it and see lots that is just plain toxic (although often very subtly so). also i see it as subtly (or not so subtly) distracting people away from real life, with all its joys and challenges (which are harder to overcome in my opinion if you are distracting yourself from them by sitting in front of the tv every night).

my dh is mostly on board with not having our ds watch it, but he watches it endlessly after ds and i go to bed. on the one hand, it is none of my business what he does when i go to bed, but somehow i feel that if we really want ds to be healthily tv free, then we need to be too, so that we can learn to fill our own lives with all the interesting things that life has to offer, even if we face a few quiet evenings at first, so that ds can learn to live that way too. (i dont know if that makes sense, but i feel like if we can't live fulfilled lives without tv, then how can we expect ds to).

right now my life and time is almost totally occupied with homeschooling my ds, but i do LOVE reading, music, and cooking, and i look forward to spending my time on a million other things as time goes on.

any ideas, quotes, articles, etc. that can inspire my ds to join me in pursuing the richness of a tv free life without making him feel badly?

thanks for any ideas!

[MommaCrystal]

I don't know. We just talked about it. On and off for months. And not JUST about TV. But about our shared vision for our family, for our marriage, for our children. In those conversations I wove TV into it. After maybe 6 months DH was pushing ME to cancel it.

[mamaLHK]

would you mind elaborating? how did you motivate, or weave it in? i'd love to hear anything else you can say about it, because i dont think i am doing a very good job of it. anyone else? thanks!

[MommaCrystal]

My husband is well aware of the studies on young children and TV. He was also sensitive to how our children behaved in relation to something they saw on TV recently.

When we talk about our shared vision for our family we talk about things we need to make sure we do that instill our values into our children. Are we doing these things? What's working? What's not? What do we need more of/less of? Where can we find the time? In this way priorities are born. TV was never a priority. But so many other things were.

Plus I could say things like... "N doesn't seem to be spending as much time playing X these days. He's always asking for this or that show instead." Or, "We've been really busy lately and the boys haven't had much time for TV. Have you noticed how much calmer they are?" Or, "Play board games tonight was awesome. Glad we chose that over watching...."

It all just slowly turned him in my direction. Of course, that honestly isn't hard to do as we share the same values and ideas about life. He respects me and really listens when I bring something up. He is unselfish to a fault. Giving up his Nascar was HARD. And we'll probably get over the air TV so he can watch some races. But with the money we're saving he realizes he can take our boys to REAL races on occasion. That's a greater experience than the TV can offer.