Growing up, I watched lots of TV. I would turn it on when I got home from school, and keep it on until I went to bed. The exception was in the summer. I was lucky enough to attend a fabulous sleepaway summer camp from the time I was 6 until I was 18, and would spend the whole summer in the woods without a TV. Coming home from camp, it would always take a few days to “catch up” with whatever new music, shows, etc. that I had missed over the summer. When I met my husband shortly after college, he didn’t have a TV in his apartment. I was amazed. He was just too frugal to buy a set and pay for cable. When we moved in together, he was happy to watch my TV. Then we started down our parenting road fairly normally. Robin and I spent many of her early days nursing and watching reruns of Dawson’s Creek in the mornings, Oprah in the afternoon, and the Simpsons when my husband came home from work. Robin even had her own Baby Einstein DVD to watch. Shortly after Robin turned a year old, I was introduced to the book Last Child in the Woods. After reading the book and doing a lot of thinking and soul searching, I decided I didn’t like the influence the TV had on myself or my family. I didn’t like that it was distracting me from my baby. I griped about the TV to my husband. He took action and decided to unplug it and move it to our basement storage room. We never plugged it back in. The TV sat in storage for over a year before I realized that it was not going to be a part of our lives anymore and I was able to let it go. I posted it on Freecycle and a nice lady came and took it away forever.
Mommy Read This! 