Why we don't have TV

Allow me to get on a soapbox for a minute or two.

I'm pretty positive that most of you don't, or won't agree with my ideas on TV and kids.

Please know that I am not saying that any other way of handling the TV issue is wrong, this is just how and why, I do, what I do.

It's just me, and really just me, I mean Chad will probably be rolling his eyes reading this more than the rest of you.

I just want to let you know why I feel this way, and if you don't want to know, allow yourself to be distracted by my cute kids. They are the real reason I choose this so-called sheltered little life.

I am not the "Kool-Aid mom."

My kids don't even know what Kool-Aid is.

There are a lot of things my kids don't know about that most kids do.

Then there are a lot of things my kids know about, but wouldn't know about if they didn't have a Grandma Julie, (i.e; McDonalds, Ding Dongs, Sponge Bob and commercials...out of spite I tell ya!).

Chad and I have been married for nearly 8, wonderful, years.

In that time, we have never had cable, dish or even local channels like PBS.

That's right, I didn't watch a single episode of American Idol this year. Gasp.

And you know what, we haven't felt like we've missed a thing.

This was a decision we made before we were married, to not have TV in our home.

We own a TV, and literally hundreds of movies, but never had channels.

The reason for this decision started out because of Chad's kids.

They were TV junkies.

They asked for everything that they saw on commercials.

They would stay up late into the night watching the tube, (I'm talking wee hours of the morning), a trait inherited from their night owl father.

I couldn't deal with that.

I need my sleep, and I was never one to waste my days being a couch potato as a kid.

I wanted more for our family life when they were there, more structured family activities and less zoning out.They did not , and still do not always deal well with this.

Every summer, it is like pulling teeth to get them to stay outside and play like I did as a kid.

I know times have changed, that video games and tv are more enticing then having to use your own imagination, I get that, I can't go a day without using my computer.

So we have screen time.

It is not a set amount of time, not yet anyway.

They can either watch one movie, (educational (not documentaries or anything, but shows like Blues Clues, Little Einsteins or my kids favorite The Magic School Bus), or a Disney type movie with a good meaning-(anything that is not what I call useless, like Spongebob, that teaches my kids to repeat words like 'stupid' or 'duh')) or play for a little bit either on the Wii or on the computer.

I know that there will be time for my kids to fill their heads with useless TV and movies when they are older.

I'm not going to lie, most of my favorite things to watch are completely useless time wasters, but I think as a kid, your brain can soak up so much good, why waste it!

As a kid, I watched TV so minimally, I mean like Saturday morning cartoons, and that is only if the sun wasn't a shinin'!

We were outside at sunrise and my mom had to bribe us to come back inside, long after sunset.

We took our meals outside, and ate them on the run.

We played in the sandbox, we jumped on the trampoline, we rode bikes.

We made up elaborate 'house' like games using my moms old pattern books, choosing our outfits, our husbands, our kids, our bridesmaids, and could entertain ourselves for literally days, just stopping to sleep and resuming where we left off in the morning.

We would have 'carnivals' in our backyard with all the neighbors and have different 'booths' with different games that we paid for with rock tickets and win prizes, like flowers (dandelions), and happy meal toys, and we would always have a trophy to give to the biggest winner of the day, just to hold and admire my plastic 'BigBoy' piggy bank.

I want my kids to have that kind of childhood.

The kind that has so many memories attached to it, that you could write novels about the games you played, and the things you thought up.

The kind of childhood that makes you think of your siblings as your best friends.

After all, they were the ones that you went to the moon with, walked down the catwalks in Paris with and were there the day you became the first 10 year old President of the United States, and the next day when you became the first Queen or King of the whole wide world.

I want my kids to always have popsicle grins, dirty knees, freckled cheeks and sun kissed hair.

I want them to be able to get wet with the hose in a 100 different ways, climb trees, hit a homerun, throw a frisbee, make a million dandelion wishes and gain a complete appreciation for the outdoors.

I want my kids to come in at the end of the day so exhausted, that they can't wait to sleep, and dream about the adventures they will have the next day.

In the winter, if they can't be playing outside, they can read, or play with toys, or work on one of their countless art projects they have thought up.

I want them to use their imaginations while they are young, I want them to just be kids.

So that is why we don't, or won't get TV at the Hewlett household.

Now excuse me while I go watch some re-runs on Hulu.