Of Dreams and Television

I dream of Henry growing up to be cultured and intelligent and, you know, treading that fine line of good taste which is probably really just snobbery that knows how to be likeable. (Actually, my nighttime dreams involving Henry are usually nightmares where I forget him in the car or something, but, you know. My daydreams are good.)

And to that end--of being a Good Parent who will turn out a nice, respectable, relatively calm and well-behaved child (as much as that is ever possible)--I decided we were going to follow the AAP guideline and not let him watch tv until he's 2. So far we're succeeding pretty well, because I decided that there would be SOMETHING I was going to stick to absolutely, and I'm not giving up on it. Yes, there have been studies that indicate tv viewing doesn't actually do any harm to young kids, but I made the decision and I'm sticking to it. (Though lately it's becoming more difficult physically as he becomes more able and eager to contort himself in all kinds of new directions.)

The catch is this: Cory and I watch a lot of tv. We stream Netflix, we have a list of shows we follow on Hulu, we occasionally watch the Shaytards on Youtube, and, now that we got our shiny new tv for Christmas and Cory was genius enough to make an antenna, we can surf through regular channels and waste time on things like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The tv is our standard background noise. But instead of ruminating on the fact that we should probably watch less television ourselves if we really want to instill tv-free habits in our son, I'm going to show a picture of the kind of cute thing that happens when trying to keep Henry from watching when we do (though in this case, it was Cory watching something on his laptop instead of the tv).

Fun times. :)