Secondary Television
Aug 22nd, 2007 by Tana
As a general rule, we do not allow our children to watch TV. Of course, there are exceptions. Ben has an Elmo potty-training video his grandma gave him along with Lady and the Tramp that Steve lets him watch sometimes on the weekend. And my early efforts at potty training consisted of Ben sitting on his potty while watching Sesame Street. But other than that, no TV.
Now Steve and I watch TV. The news. Football. NASCAR. Baseball. M*A*S*H. Sometimes Steve will watch home improvement shows or classic movies on the weekends. After the boys are in bed, we watch CSI, and Steve likes to watch E.R. But again, no kid’s shows.
Even I don’t sit down and just watch TV. I’m always doing something else, like making supper or knitting or planning my week or something. In fact, I find it very difficult to just sit and watch TV, though Steve seems to be able to do that.
Bottom line, the only TV our kids get regularly could be considered secondary TV (kind of like secondary smoke). And with that in mind, here is a little story to add spice to your day.
Yesterday, Ben was reading his George Learns the Alphabet book next to me while I was sitting on the couch knitting. He reads the various letters on the pages and talks about what the letters stand for and embellishes the information from there. I don’t know what letter he was on, but the dialogue was something like this.
“{some letter} is for duck and goose. We saw a duck and goose when we went to the fair. The duck and the goose say ‘Aflac,’ don’t they?”
Yup, they do.
lol. My boys, too. When they were smaller it was a riot. “Drew, what’s a duck say?” “Quack Quack”. “And what’s a goose say?” “Aflac”.
Yep.
My kids watch television, but commercials like that don’t run on Nickelodeon or Disney. So it’s secondary for them, too… 🙂