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Family’s
no-TV home
is a noble
endeavor
St. Petersburg Times – June 2, 2003
The Walker boys, ages 5, 3 and 2, asked for one thing for Christmas: a
football. When they go to the grocery store, they don’t ask
for the latest cookies
or sugary cereals. That’s because they’ve never
seen a television commercial. And
that’s because they have no television in their home.
“They have no idea what’s out there,”
said their mother, Mary Caroline Walker, who lives in St. Petersburg.
“It’s not just the TV shows.
It’s the commercials and all the marketing. We have
none of that.”
Most parents have mixed feelings about television and kids. We
don’t want our kids watching too
much, but it certainly comes in handy when we need to keep them
occupied. But Mary Caroline
and her husband, Joel, who are expecting their fourth son in July, are
raising their family with no
TV-assisted breaks.
“How do I get anything done? I don’t,”
Walker said with a laugh. “A lot of times the best thing is
not the easiest thing.”
Ten years ago, the Walkers considered how they spent their time. They
worked all day, came
home and turned on the television.
“Finally we said, ‘Why are we watching other people
live their lives when we could be out playing
tennis or doing something ourselves?’ ” She said.
They took their TV to a pawn shop and, years
later, have no plans to replace it.
“Everybody said: ‘Oh, you’ll get a TV
when you have kids or you won’t get anything done,’
”
Walker said. “Now people ask how do I take a shower. I just
bring puzzles into the bathroom.
You have to be creative.”
What’s just as surprising to me is the fact that I
didn’t hate her. She doesn’t consider TV a demon
or look down on the rest of us who know NBC’s must-see-TV
Thursday night lineup as well as our
mother’s maiden name. She doesn’t brag that her
kids are TV-free. And her boys aren’t perfect
angels who sit quietly on the sofa while she takes part in an interview.
“It’s party time,” 5-year-old Billy
yelled as he threw about 25 plastic drinking straws in the air.
“Fireworks.”
Her house gets messy, she puts off chores until the kids are in bed and
she doesn’t cook a hot
meal every night. But at the end of each day, Walker has spent plenty
of quality time with her kids
and is teaching them how to amuse themselves.
“I’ll bring out the Legos or the Lincoln Logs then
I’ll go do what I have to do. They do play
computer games a little. If I get 20 minutes straight (of time alone),
I think: ‘Whew, that was
pretty good,’ ” Walker said. But most of her day is
spent with the boys in the backyard, painting,
drawing with sidewalk chalk and reading.
At the end of the day when kids get grumpy or wired and bedtime is
still a few hours off, that’s
when Walker and her boys sit down to read. Her 5-year-old has become
such an attentive listener
he can consume five chapters of Charlotte’s Web in one
sitting. During his books, the younger
boys go back and forth from their mom’s lap to their own
books and toys. But there is enough
time for everybody to pick a book on his own level.
The kitchen is another replacement for watching TV. “I guess
most people have their kids watch
TV while they cook dinner, but they cook dinner with me,”
Walker said. “They like to measure and
crack the eggs and stir. They love the salad spinner.”
But Walker cooks three meals a week, tops. Then she serves three nights
of leftovers and orders
a pizza or makes sandwiches or pancakes one night.
Along with the extra quality time she spends with her kids, another
advantage to no television is
limited exposure to the evils of the world. After the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, notes went
home from her oldest son’s school advising parents on how to
talk to their kids about all the
images they were seeing on TV. That was not an issue in the Walker
household.
As for themselves, Walker and her husband get news from the newspaper
and radio. They can
see movies in the theater. And though her husband is an avid sports
fan, he tries to see a few live
baseball or basketball games each year instead of spending hours
watching them from his sofa.
“Joel can quote all these sports statistics from when he was
growing up but he doesn’t know
anything from now. But he said his life has gone on fine without
knowing the latest stats,” Walker
said. “People are always talking about how they have no time
with their husband or their kids –
and then these are the same people who are also talking about Survivor
and all these things
they watch on TV.”
When the boys do see a television they are pretty much in awe. Walker
doesn’t mind if they
watch at a friend’s house and they can watch one movie a day
on the VCR when they visit their
grandparents. When they get older, she thinks the boys might feel left
out if the lunch table is
discussing the latest hit show or some great game that was on last
night. But if that’s the worst
thing that happens, she thinks the benefits of growing up without
television far outweigh the
downside.
Though I left the Walkers’ home feeling like I’d
just talked with some greater being from another
planet, I’m not ready to take our TV to the pawn shop. I did
come home, however, and convinced
my husband that we are not watching television or the VCR at night for
the whole summer.
As for my kids, we already had cut back after our chicken pox episode.
That’s when we temporarily
moved a little television into my 6-year-old daughter’s room
where she was quarantined. My
husband even taught her how to work the remote. Soon I noticed her
switching channels to
watch a secondary show for a few minutes while a commercial was
interrupting her primary show.
That was it. I realized she was hooked and tried to cut her off cold.
Now the only show the girls
watch during the week is Arthur at 5:30 p.m. They get a little more on
the weekends with a
Saturday night movie. With summer, and no one in school, I
realistically didn’t think I could keep
it at 30 minutes a day. But Walker inspired me, so I will strictly
limit TV or VCR watching this
summer.
As my friend, Susan Keefer, said recently: “Now kids
don’t get up and turn the TV off because
there’s nothing on to watch but Hee-Haw. There’s
always something on somewhere.
You can reach Katherine Snow Smith by e-mail at snowsmith@verizon.net
or write Rookie Mom, St. Petersburg Times, PO Box 1121, St. Petersburg,
FL 33731.
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