our story of tv free

[meemee]

it is kinda an out of the box one so i thought i would share.

dd was a tv addict when she was little. i had to take care of my mom on an emergency so at 3 she got 8 hours of tv for about a month and a half.

i never held back tv for her because i figured out her personality. when she is into something she is REALLY into it. however we never really watched tv on a regular basis. it was when we didnt have anything planned. so essentially we could go a month with no tv and then watch for 5 hours straight.

by the time dd was 5 tv watching was replaced by computer time.

mind you though we never really watched tv. there was no turn on tv at 8 am thing. it was mostly dvds. i think she watched shows from 2 to 3 and no more after that. i have never watched tv myself.

once she started school, whatever little tv we watched disappeared further.

we just gave our tv away. we still watch movies and now just do it on our computer. dd is 7 now and neither of us miss tv.

[bea694]

Congratulations! I aspire to be there someday soon!!!

[zoebird]

this is our story:

i tried to go TV free before the baby was born, but it just didn't work out for me. Dh would be out until about 7 or 8 each day (work, gym, activity), and then he would want to do this thing for another couple of hours before bed. So, i was mostly lonely and bored and so i would read or watch TV.

after the baby was born, i was spending a lot of time nursing. Dh originally was going to be home more or whatever, but it turned out that he wasn't at the time. I was still bored and pretty lonely, so i would watch tv in the evenings until DS and i went to bed.

i then decided i would not get a converter box (we didn't have cable--so most of my tv was dvds and a few shows that i liked such as The Biggest Loser). well, DH again said we would do family stuff together, or hang out or whatever, but we really didn't, so i lasted about two weeks before i was bored and lonely again, so i got the converter box and watched my shows again.

then, we moved to NZ. we did not bring our TV. we do not have a TV. TV is not an option. we also don't have our DVDs (still in storage in the US), but we do get some out of the video store to watch on those nights when we are really tired.

DH is home more, is willing to talk and hang out and do fun things as a family and just he and i together. being here, there are less distractions. he doesn't have as many friends and activities as before, for example. and working a half day at the office (i work the other half), he has more time for his things with DS around, and we all have more family time together.

so, it's working out quite nice, being tv free. and besides, tv here isn't great and "cable" is very expensive (it's actually satellite called Sky TV) and i don't like having that many channels anyway.