No TV November

I pledge to turn off the television for one month.

I'm going public with this, because I know there are others out there that need this.  They need to join my anonymous support group for TV addicted stay-at-home parents and they need to STOP, cold-turkey, today.

--Plus my wife won't let me do, "No-Shave November" (or more colloquially; "Movember"*) because my beard is ugly and scratchy.  So this is my compromise:  She, and the rest of my family are OFF TV until December 1st.

No, I don't believe it can be done.  No I don't believe you're an awful failure of a parent if you can't do it either.  I'm just saying let's try this together, and do it for our prostates... and if you don't have a prostate, do it for my prostate.  Actually that just sounds weird... just do it for fun... because you hate your life, and you want to make a positive change for your family... and there's no hockey anyway.

Listen-- in the masochistic world of stay-at-home parenting there are some tried and true methods of escape.  

First and foremost, it seems, is the television.

Though for many years the television was my humble adviser, my gracious friend, my companion and my confident, years later I look back and see the shallowness and contrite nature of our relationship.   Sure it  carried through on its promise of hours of entertainment.  Yes, it showed me the world as I longed to see it, it filled me with hope of a new and amazing tomorrow, and promised an amazing new car and shoes that would help me to fly.  But it didn't tell me I was going to have to get off the couch and work for it, it just came at me with more and more interesting flashing lights and loud noises.  (A man's arch-nemesis -- watch for my blog on why a man can't pay attention to you at a bar...)

So there might have been a time when I would shake the hands of the inventors of the original home-television sets, and said,

"Well done.  I shake you warmly by the hand.  Your work has brought joy to our homes particularly around the dinner hour when my young family can be distracted from sitting side-ways in their chairs, flinging potatoes into the air, and smearing tomato sauce onto their clothing.  Finally there is an escape offered after a long day at the factory."  

Now I simply wish to shake these geniuses, and yell:

"For the love of all that is good and holy, please do not submit the world to this plague.  You have no idea the reality you will forge with the phosphorescent demon of nature!"

Let me explain:

As October turned cold this year, and the positive physio-emotional response to being a new stay-at-home parent started to wane, the poisonous and addictive affects of the television-drug began to do its work.

If you don't relate to this affliction already then let this serve as a warning:  You will tell yourself, "I'll just let them watch 10 minutes in the morning before breakfast.  My kids are not going to be raised by television like I was." and you feel good, you feel real good because the one year old is not screaming for yogurt and the three year old hasn't yet destroyed the house.

It's a high.

It's a horribly wonderful high that, like the morning coffee, becomes less and less effective the more and more you abuse it.  Soon those ten minutes are just not enough to combat those bleak, dark mornings of late-fall.  Ten turns to twenty, twenty to forty, and pretty soon you're back on the television train and there's nothing you can do about it.

Sure you can turn it off by 8, maybe 9am.  Sure you can stop anytime you want to.  But do you want to?  Do you really want to leave it off when the 1YO is napping, the 3YO is not, but Netflix is calling to him saying, "I have Mighty Machines... Big and Mighty Machines..." and in that beautiful whine he's saying, "Daddy can I watch a movie now, please... I don't want puzzles... I don't want to do colouring... I don't want to paint... I don't like it outside... I don't think you're a very good parent anymore, I'm going to tell the next stranger I see that you abuse me and then the police are going to take you away to jail because not letting me watch TV is illegal..."

The time has come to take a stand-- To enter "the program" and get off the glow.  What started as a summer for exploration, enjoying the outdoors, frequenting the zoo and the playground, by the end of October, now looks like an advertisement for comfortable furniture.  Enough is enough, and I don't care what episodes I am going to miss, I am going OFF the sauce!  AND no matter how painful it may become, my kids are too.

If you believe in what I'm saying then make your pledge in the comment feed below.  I will be there for support; updating my status, and adding some pointers along the way @stayathomegang on Twitter #noTVnovember.  Let me know how it's going for you!

PS.  If I do make it through this and you don't... well I only have a low-grade addiction as my house has no cable so in theory this should be easier.

And for my next trick I'm going to go off the internet.  I'll call it "DSL-free December".  Just so you know I've already started cutting down, and this post was written by hand.

Footnotes:

*No Shave November is a solidarity movement to raise funds and awareness of men's-health related issues. Men grow the most offensive facial hair they can for one month, and a few of them get sponsors who support them in this.  I've heard it all started with a group of Finnish lumberjacks who got lost in the woods of Eastern Alaska in the 1950's during the month of November and one of them got Testiculitis or something.

**No beards were shaved during the writing of this post.  Well, here anyway...