10th Annual National TV Turnoff Week 19-25 April '04

I believe in TV censorship for children. For my children anyway. I have three children, all boys aged fourteen, thirteen and eleven and this is the first year that they have been allowed to watch RugRats. And they do watch it because they wonder what they have missed all this time.

My children come home from school - two are in middle school and the youngest is still in elementary school. Anyway, they come home from school and complain to me that all their friends get to watch R-rated movies and play M-rated video games. First of all I do not believe this. I have not taken a poll among the mothers I know, so correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe that tweens and young teens are allowed to watch R-rated movies. I don't even watch R-rated movies.

OK, so I have seen a few R-rated movies in my time and they are fine to watch if you are a mature person. A child under the age of seventeen doesn't need to see the images, thoughts and ideas which are portrayed in these movies. They just don't need that stuff in their heads. The ratings, Thank Goodness, are there for a reason.

Another complaint that I get since I am such a strict mom is that I do not allow my children to watch TV past 9:30 p.m. To my way of thinking there just isn't that much on the tube at that hour that they need to see. Therefore, I am once again the only mom around who thinks like I do but I firmly believe that my boys will grow to be decent, non-violent men who have brains and know how to use them.

All this having been said, I am an advocate of National TV Turnoff Week. We are doing it as a family and I already see the benefits. My children are doing great. They are miserable and bored but doing great. My one son will get extra credit from his English teacher on Friday for not watching TV for the whole week. With that incentive plus the fact that his girlfriend has her TV turned off too, he's doing pretty well with it. But he's a Gemini and they need constant mental stimulation. He comes to me every once in a while complaining that he is sooooo bored.

The other evening, which was the first night of NO-TV Week, my son (the same one)came to me and was just miserable. He had the entire week of no TV looming in front of him. It was about 8:30 p.m. and he had gone without TV from the time homework was finished, not counting dinnertime when the TV is not on anyway, for about two and a half hours. He flopped down on my bed bored to tears and almost literally in tears. I thought hard for a minute and went to get the novel he was assigned to read for his English class reading grade.When I brought the book back to where he still lay flopped on my bed, he looked at me like I had two heads and said most emphatically, "I am not reading!" I thought for a minute again and instead of putting the book back and leaving him to his boredom, I opened the book and began to read to him like I had done when he was just a little tyke. First he protested, threatening to leave, didn't want to listen. I just kept reading. Then the most wonderful thing happened. He got very quiet. I stole a look at him as he lie there on my bed and he was listening intently to the story. I kept reading to my thirteen year old son and it was wonderful. When I got to the end of chapter one, I handed him the book and said to him, "You read the next chapter." He gave me a wry little look but took the book and read chapter two. When he finished that he came to find me to say that he had finished that chapter and I told him to read chapter three. With a little smile, he did just that and his evening was saved.

We will all be glad when we can turn on the TV next week. But this week we are reading books and shooting hoops and talking to each other and it has been really great. Maybe we won't have to wait a whole year for the next time we celebrate TV Turn-off Week. Maybe we'll just turn off the TV sometime and enjoy a little quality time together as a family.

Jennie Burt