I’ve been very hesitant to write this particular post. As a humble underfunded father, gloating doesn’t come naturally to me. Will a boastful article cost me readership? Will I get saddled by the Substack community with that most cumbersome label: elite?
I had mostly poo-poo’d the idea, but then I remembered my responsibility. The parenting world needs my hard-earned knowledge—even if it comes by way of a post where I just go on and on and on and on about how much better I am than everyone else.
And so here we are.
First off, TV is just fine. Evil in many respects, sure, but it’s also a place to learn and develop mutual interests and survive a round of the flu. TV gave us Bluey, and Bluey gives us life.
And yet, in our household, TV time got a little out of whack. Our second child arrived in July of 2020, which you may recall was a really fun time. Our second child was also colicky, which made that fun time even funner. It also made it so our first child was quickly adopted and raised by the cast of Cars. Not the ideal parenting move, but it seemed better than sending him out into the woods while his mother and I tried to figure out why his sister was screaming all the time.
Flash forward to this year, when TV rules had tightened but mostly gone from way too much TV to substantially too much TV. The kids got a show in the morning and a show in the afternoon, except that didn’t include the shows we put on when something time-sensitive came up and the only way to manage was to put on a show.
The amount of television never felt too excessive. Both kids still spent plenty of time outside, never ate in front of the TV, and it felt in line with what our friends’ kids were doing. The biggest problem was always the transition away from watching TV. A post-screen time meltdown is in a class all its own; it’s an untethered tantrum that can only be blamed on the parent who let the child’s mind slowly turn to goo in front of the tube.
Needless to say, our kids’ TV watching has been a topic of conversation and contention for a while. Which brings us to the current moment in the story of how I’m the best parent ever.
In the fall our son will start T-K, or Pre-K, or Kindergarten Light, depending on where you live. A couple months ago, his future school sent home an informational packet recommending, among other things, a big reduction in screen time. That alone might not have swayed us, but we were also about to take our son out of his daycare in preparation for summer travel and saving a little summer travel money. As the transition date neared, I started getting anxious about how much TV I might let the kids watch when daddy daycare went full time. Left to my own devices, everyone might spend the whole day looking at devices.
If ever there was a time to firm up rules, this was it.
So we did. And that’s the whole story. Thanks for reading.
Just kidding! There’s a little more.
But, like, that really is most of the story. Our son had his last day of daycare on a Friday. That weekend, we prepped for Monday when The Great Television Watching Reduction would go into effect. The morning show: Gone. The afternoon show: Donezo. The new itinerary: An eight-minute Bluey episode as a family each night. Weekends are a little more lax and we usually do a movie on Fridays, but that’s it.
Can you believe it worked? Me neither. No one is more surprised than I am at our success. I was sure the first Monday would be the worst day of our lives, but I loaded the kids in the car before they could chain themselves to the television and we went and played by a creek or something. It went swimmingly. I’m pretty shocked by how fast both kids recalibrated. No one asks to watch a show first thing in the morning; instead they just fight over toys and have sibling-induced meltdowns, as is the natural order of things.
I don’t think this would have worked without a built-in transition. If I had just waltzed in on a normal morning and announced the end of daily cartoons, I can imagine my son using his rage powers to crash the Earth into the sun. Since the TV shift was attached to a big change in his daily schedule, it became more palatable. So... I guess my advice is to pull your kid out of daycare? Maybe not. I’m sure you can find another big shift.
Again, I think TV is pretty cool. If your children watch six hours of TV a day and that feels like the right amount, awesome. I feel like every successful screenwriter and director talks about spending every second of their childhood watching movies and TV, so there’s something to be said for that.
However, if you feel a nagging guilt about throwing on a mediocre kids show as a cheap means of buying everyone some short-lived happiness, may our journey serve as some kind of inspiration. We spent a couple years talking about how too much TV made our son a turd, all while letting him watch a lot of TV. He saw Cars no fewer than 75 times in 2020, absorbed most of the Netflix cartoon catalogue by early 2023, and snuck in a million episodes of Paw Patrol when visiting friends and family with cable.
Right now he’s sitting on the couch reading to himself while I write my little article. I am a parenting legend. I cannot believe this newsletter is free.
You love to see the UnderFunded Father strut now and again.