I confess that I relied heavily on that DVD player for those hectic months postpartum. “Good morning Linus,” I’d greet my toddler rubbing the sleeplessness from my eyes and jiggling my newborn, “What movie would you like to watch this morning?” Actions repeated build habits and before long the words, “Watch Cars, please? Watch Jungle Book? Get Aladdin at library?” came out of my two-year-old’s mouth more often than “Read a book, please?”
I’ve never been one to watch much television. We have neither cable nor streaming here and even my college roomies would attest that I seldom sat on our sofa. Yet my son was sleeping with movies instead of toys and asking to take DVD boxes with him on outings. We still read together each night, but I think he forgot the library had books. Face level to our eight-month-old, our DVD collection was floored daily adding to his temptation. Our new normal had been established and an intervention was in order.
I thought back to Mrs. Pound’s words when my roommate Abby had complained as a child about being bored, “That’s okay, you can be bored. You don’t have to be entertained all the time.” So once the newness of having two kids rubbed off, I determined to give them more opportunities to address boredom. I let Linus walk in circles singing to himself. I let him flop on the carpet and moan. I bought a roll of butcher paper and dumped out the markers. We got a free Lego set. I taught him to put away the silverware and load the washing machine.
In addition to saying, “No” more often, I founded our now belov’d ritual of drinking warm milk over books before naps and bedtime. Soon I heard, “Mommy, read and drink hot milk?” twice a day. Pleased but no yet satisfied, I made one more change.
In October, I moved the movies to the bookshelf and the children’s books to the TV stand. Switcheroo! I love the way it looks, actually (see the DVDs on the floorshelf in the background?) and just as I had hoped, the change changed the kids. Now I often find Linus sitting alone flipping through pages or even telling his sister “Going on a Bear Hunt” from memory. Joy pulls books onto the floor and plays with them instead of movies, which must be better for her brain development, right? I even watch less and therefore have more time to do things like write this blog post.
TV can be a handy tool, one that I still use to help me concentrate on important phone calls. But stowing the flicks out of my own reach cuts down on my temptation to overuse it. Now TV is not a routine, crutch or fallback plan. Things are a little quieter and my kids have the opportunity to imagine, help with chores, and read books.
