Last Thursday, the hubs and I decided B had to go screen-free. After sleeping on it, we changed our minds and just went TV-free, letting B earn 30 minutes of educational computer or DS time each day. I have placed locks on ALL channels on both TVs.
The main reason we're doing this is b/c his watching TV is negatively affecting his communication. He is not having real conversations; he is merely repeating lines from movies, TV shows, computer games and even books over and over and over... However, I'm not taking away books. But we are going backwards and losing ground we gained over the last year. This has proven to me that it is time to start teaching 3rd grade now. If he is going to memorize and repeat everything, it might as well all be education-related. It is not healthy to go the rest of the Summer like this.
When I told B on Friday morning he was not going to watch TV the rest of the Summer, I gotta hand it to him, he took it very maturely. None of the expected reactions - no growling, dirty looks, storming off, crying, yelling, attempts at negotiations. 5 minutes later...
B: Can I finish watching The Goofy Movie that I started to watch yesterday? I recorded the rest of it.
Me: No.
B: Why not?
Me: Do you remember me telling you 5 minutes ago that you were not watching TV for the rest of the Summer?
B: But you said TV. THIS is a MOVIE.
Me: It's recorded on TV.
B: Well, can I put one of my MOVIES in the DVD PLAYER?
Me: No. No TV shows. No DVD movies. No streaming shows and movies on the Wii from Netflix.
B: Blink. Blink, blink. Flung himself onto the couch.
For the next hour, he spoke gibberish, non-sense and made lots of noises, very loudly and constantly, hoping to get a reaction. I am the queen of the battle of wills. My mom and and I fought them for years and I will not give in. When he stepped it up to potty words, I thought about stepping in and saying something b/c we don't allow that talk, but I chose to ignore it. Those words only lasted a couple of minutes before he gave up. Phew! Friday afternoon, B and the hubs went away for the weekend to visit my sisters-in-law, so I had no TV battles to fight nor sounds to hear for 51.5 hours. :oD
I didn't sleep well last night and woke up this morning tired, cranky and with a headache. Faced with no TV inside and a code orange day outside, I realized my options were to go to the gym or start teaching 3rd grade. So we started school. It took us 3 hours to do History, Geography, Spelling, Language Arts, Reading - I read to him from 1 book and he read to me from another one, and Science. It took longer than it should have, I think, b/c I was not prepared to start today and had not read through the lesson plans. I will spend time tonight going through it all and getting my ducks in row. After we finished Science I told B that we were all done, but then remembered we hadn't done Math. I decided to skip it. I wasn't going to push it; we'll work in tomorrow.
We had a good time. B and I both enjoyed the readings and learned new things (i.e. the difference between monkeys and apes is that monkeys have tails). B's least-liked part of learning was, of course, writing, but I knew that would be an issue. He loved Science and when our short lesson was done, he begged me to learn more. I told him no b/c I don't what to finish Science by Christmas and have nothing the rest of the year. But, leaving Science for last is a good thing; it will motivate B to work through everything else first.
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