TV will rot your brain

At least that's what my mother used to tell me when she thought I was watching too much of it.

The amount of TV that my child watches is one of my biggest day to day struggles.   I still only allow her to watch Sesame and Dora and the very rare Thomas - I don't have a problem with Thomas, but she runs hot and cold on it so I don't often include it in the rotation.

Even though she only watches those two shows,  we live in time of DVR and On Demand which means there is always a Dora and Sesame Street available.    She could spend all her waking hours watching TV - and sometimes I think she would, given the opportunity.

I picked Baby Girl up from school today and on the way home she asked if it was TV time.   It was 4:30 in the afternoon and she goes to bed at 7:30.   She easily could have filled those three hours with TV.   I told her that we could watch a Dora after dinner.   She immediately asked for dinner.

When we got home I asked her if she wanted to color and I set up her crayons and coloring books.  She was happy enough and soon asked for Play-Doh.   Anything to not watch 3 hours of TV!

Art time is one of the only ways I can avoid the endless hours of TV.  I have it on good authority that Santa Clause is bringing this easel for Christmas.   I'm pretty excited about it,  it will make art time so much easier  (what you don't see on the easel is a chalkboard on the other side.  And under the paper with the fish painted on is a whiteboard).   Hopefully our art time will last more than 25 minutes.

As she gets older there will be more things to do instead of TV, but she will also have more things to watch.   Its a catch-22.

I tell myself that she doesn't watch TV during the day, so it's okay that she watches some at night.  But the hours after daycare and before bed are the only hours we have with her,  so why are we letting her fill those hours with TV?    But she likes it,  and both Sesame and Dora do teach her things... so..... what am I supposed to do?   As I said before,  it's one of my biggest struggles.