As I’ve said before, we’ve practised gentle parenting and so there has not been a huge paradigm shift. Our two areas of control had always been TV and food. We never announced that we would be dropping limits, it soon became obvious.
Instead of saying ‘No, you’ve already had a juice today’, we left Alex undisturbed as he opened the fridge to pour another glass. This went on for a week or two, he would drink a lot of juice! We made no comments, enforced no limitations with the exception that I was not going to buy an infinite amount of juice! So fairly quickly it was realised that the faster he drank it, the longer he would then go without it. We talked about this as I didn’t want him to feel this was a physical limit, but rather an economical one. Not only that, but I wanted him to be considerate of the needs of his family. Unschooling does not mean ‘doing whatever you want’ – thanks to Pam Larrichia’s e-books and Sandra Dodd’s ‘Unschooling Badly’ points on collaboration.
TV was a sore point for me. I remember watching a lot when I was a kid. Coming home from school and sitting for 5 or 6 hours a day thereafter watching, barely moving. I was determined for that to not be my kids! I thought I was being responsible in limiting screen time. Now I’ve changed my mind. I have no regrets about before, that would be futile. I did what I thought was best with the knowledge I had at the time. Now I know better. So what happened? Alex binged! It was uncomfortable for a while, but he had catching up to do. We had to put off activities or meet ups because of the upset caused by ending a viewing session. At first I was trying to get him to understand that the TV can be paused, it’s there when we come back and other seemingly rational ideas. That didn’t work, of course not!
In October I had what I noted in my journal as ‘revelations’. I needed to stop assigning less value to TV, or placing greater value on a documentary over a cartoon. I needed to understand what he gets out of it. I’ve seen that he enjoys the story, and is engaged. He is fascinated by end credits. He rarely sits through any form of viewing without asking questions, and regularly asks for me to stay with him. So there’s another challenge to what I’d come to believe about TV! It was a parents right to use whilst they throw some dinner together, do a quick tidy up. But it’s precisely these ideas that add to the belief that TV is an act of passive downtime.
It’s November. It took much longer than a week or month for us to get passed TV as an activity with limits. Alex is regulating, he turns shows off before they are finished. He’ll choose some alternative if its more appealing to him. My job is to ensure he has alternatives.