TV-Turnoff Week Blog Challenge

I am so excited about participating in the TV-Turnoff Week Blog Challenge. This will be our first time. I think one of the most beneficial things about the whole experience is what I am doing now – sitting down and thinking about the amount of time we watch TV and use our computer and setting goals for how I would like things to be.

Our current status:
My kids are allowed to watch 1 video (30 mins-1 hour) each day. Most days they do not even ask for one.
I don’t watch any television at all.
My 5-year old loves to use the computer. I have yet to do a good job imposing any sort of limit on this, although I keep saying I am.
Most days he does not use it but when he does, he does not ever want to quit.
I have been waffling on how much time to limit him to.
And I am a spastic email and blog update checker who has trouble walking anywhere near a computer without sitting down for “just a minute.”
I know this sucks a lot of time that I could be getting things done or spending time with my kids.

I am happy with the limited amount of time my kids watch TV, I am not going to do a TV-free week.
Instead I am going to concentrate in areas where I think we have issues:
Computer Use for Me and My 5 Year Old Son

Our goals for the week:
· Limit my 5-year to 30 minutes of computer time a day. I have been really indecisive on this, not knowing what the “right” amount of time is and not having a good mechanism for keeping track. I am going to commit to 30 minutes a day for the week, and then re-evaluate at the end of the week – and try not to question my decision during the week. I also will use this week to figure out a good timing method. The problem is that he does not always do it in one sitting.
· Limit my computer usage. Gosh- how am I going to do this? I can’t really go “cold turkey” as I have some things I need to do each day on the computer. I am going to unplug my laptop that I use to read blogs and waste time during the day and put it out of sight for the week. I have a slow, old computer in the home office that I will use to read email and take care of things that need to be done. The difficult issue here is how to appropriately limit my use of this. I think I will go for no more repeated running in and out to check my mail, and I am hanging up a big note on my monitor that says “Are you wasting your time?” to help encourage me to only do what I need to and get off.

So I guess the summary is that we are not actually turning everything off, but using this week to try out some new limits and maybe break some bad habits. We’ll see how it goes!