First off, let me tell you, when my older two's father left for military training, I didn't have the energy to deal with anything. I was depressed, pregnant, and at home with a three-year-old girl who missed her daddy. I missed him too. It was winter, to top it off, so the weather was miserable and dark all the time. I didn't have the energy to fight the television fight, so I let her watch it, as long as she wanted, as often as she wanted, I didn't care.
Let me tell you, in that first week I was so sick of children's programming that I never wanted to hear another kid-oriented theme song again! I didn't want to hear the bubbly children's show voices. I didn't want to be faced with yet another day of nothing but mind-numbing chatter geared towards making children think. I was so glad that the children's programming stopped at three! I swore I couldn't take much more of that. She would never do anything with her life but watch television! I was going to go insane and have the worlds most brain-rotten child!
Some time in the next week, while I was driving myself crazy with trying to find something else for my daughter to do so I wouldn't go insane, it happened. I almost didn't notice it at first. It was subtle. Yet at the same time, it was shocking. I looked over to her favorite spot on the floor by the television, but my daughter wasn't there! All that remained was her pillow and blanket!
In a somewhat frantic state that my daughter wasn't in front of the television for some reason that didn't involve hounding me for something or other, or screaming like a banshee, I shot out of the chair to find her. There were so many things she could get into, not that I was really concerned. It's just that frantic state of "the children are being too quiet" and that's when you know they're getting into trouble. I half expected to see her bedroom walls covered with crayon marks.
Sure enough, she was in her room, but I didn't see any kind of maliciousness going on. Actually, she was quite calm, playing with her toys on the floor, talking to herself. She was completely peaceful. I asked her if she wanted to watch television anymore. She said no. I asked her if I could turn it off. She said no. I asked her if I could put on something I wanted to watch. She said yes, so I just shrugged, put the news on, and assumed she just wanted it for the background noise. At least it was something more interesting than children's programming. I could use something different.
We went on this way for another week before she started telling me I could turn the television off when she was done. Then in another week's time she would beg for the television to go on, and would only sit in front of it for one show, which she decided was her favorite, Calliou
(because he had a baby sister and she was going to have a baby brother), and would then go off to play, not thinking about the television again.For the longest time I didn't have any problems with her. I found that she just wanted the television or the radio to be on more often than not. She didn't like things to be quiet. It was the same way when her dad deployed later that year. It seems while he was gone, the quiet was too much for her. As long as I let her have some noise in the background, she never even seemed to stop and watch it. Occasionally a favorite show or movie would come on and she'd actually sit down to watch it, but television very quickly got boring. It was only when her dad started restricting her television time when he got back that we had problems out of her again. Even now, I notice when I let the kids have the television on all the time, they almost never watch it! They just play with it going on in the background!
What about sweets? Who hasn't met a child that won't eat an endless amount of sweets if given the choice? Let me tell you, I have. My daughter learned at four-years-old why I was so mean and didn't let her have all the candy she could possibly want. She was bugging me for her Halloween candy that year. She wanted it so badly and I was horrible because I refused to let her have it. Finally, I got so fed up that I dropped the bucket of candy in her lap and said, "Fine. If you think you know what's best for you, have as much candy as you want. If you get sick from eating too much candy, don't expect me to feel sorry for you. You did it to yourself." What happened? She ate all the candy, of course, a whole bucket full. While we were running to the store later that day to pick up something or other, my daughter started to whine. I asked her what was wrong and before she could answer, she threw up...all over the car, her lap, everything. I cleaned her up as best I could with what I had in the car, then handed her (quite appropriately) her now-empty Halloween bucket to throw up in if she had to again, reminded her that's what happens when you eat too much candy, and drove home to get her cleaned up. She felt a lot better after she had some good, healthy food in her system. To this day she remembers that you throw up if you eat too many sweets, and has always been sure to limit herself accordingly. We haven't had a problem with her eating nothing but sweets since. Yes, we do occasionally have problems with getting her to eat at meal times because she doesn't want what we're having, but she doesn't overdo the sweets anymore. In truth, I could leave all the candy out and available, telling her she can have as much as she wants whenever she wants, but she doesn't over-eat it anymore. Now we just need to work on teaching her how to make things last and making sure there's enough for everyone!
I've found more often than not, the things that parents regulate for their children's own good often don't need to be regulated. Any college kid can tell you that while it sounds fun to live off of chips, tacos, and Ramen, after a while, it gets old! Having lived off of nothing but fast food and meals other people cooked for nearly a whole deployment, I've really lost my taste for fast foods. I'll take a home cooked meal over fast food any day! I let my kids eat nothing but mac and cheese and hot dogs for a month. By the end of it when I started throwing down baked chicken and rice casserole, stir fry, and other things they wouldn't have touched before, they were devouring it like it was the best stuff on earth. My daughter is even getting to the point where play time is boring. She'll come to me saying, "There's nothing to do but play and watch movies! I want to do something else!" We've been doing a limited amount of homeschooling lately. There's just not a good place to work with her and she's been a little burnt out. However, doing very limited amounts is having it's intended effect! Now instead of asking to go play every five minutes, when I put words in front of her asking her to work on reading, she eats it up! When we start talking facts, she wants to know more constantly. I often hear her say, "This is so much more fun than playing!"
So, I let you be the judge. Are any of the statement in that article true? Do you really need to regulate your children's time to ensure they will learn? Do you really think that, if given the option, a child would eat nothing but sweets, never sleep, and watch all the television they want without ever getting bored of it? Well, my children are a perfect example of how that's not necessarily true. I hate to say it, but sometimes letting them burn out is the best way your kids can learn that you really can have too much of a good thing.
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