My anti-commercial, green-eyed battle with the television has been well documented in this space, and it usually causes something of a backlash. Why no TV? Your child will hate you. You’ve gone too far, Momster! But I don’t like the crazed consumer, immediate gratification lifestyle that TV encourages. Plus it’s always been important to us to spend as much active time as we can with Georgia, while she’s still into being with us. And while we do rent movies, and watch TV shows from the library, we consciously limit Georgia’s commercial intake, and the need to watch TV in a serial fashion. To her “What happens next?” is for books and Prince Valiant. She can’t wait for the fifth (parentally dreaded) Sisters Eight book to come out, and her excitement over the trails of the Baudelaire siblings has us burning through Lemony Snicket books, and she bemoans the fact that we won’t read the fourth Harry Potter book to her.

We love to read, we love that she’s beginning to read, and that she loves to be read to. We read 718 pages to her in one lazy weekend. Great, right? Wellllll, sometimes it’s very convenient to switch to TV mode when dinner has to get done, or when we’re tired of reading out loud, or when we’re trying to record Greasy Kid Stuff, our radio show. But Georgia has other ideas.

“I’ve decided I am doing a new roo for Greasy Kid Stuff night!” she announced triumphantly.

“A new roo?” I asked.

“A new routine that is of health. I will do projects and make crafts instead of watching a movie during Greasy Kid Stuff!” She was very proud.

“Errrr, that’s great!” I lied. Of course I am happy that she wants to tune out, but that’s one time when it’s really difficult for either her dad Hova or me to pay attention to her. And since projects usually take some adult involvement somewhere along the line, this didn’t seem ideal. “You don’t really watch much TV, I don’t think it would be bad if you want to watch while we record.” I wondered if her teacher had been preaching the evils of TV, or if this just came about naturally. I thought the “new roo” would be forgotten by recording day, but she got her pencils and scissors and tape and was project ready with no prompting.

Then this weekend we were trying to get ready to do some rare and detested mall shopping for job interview clothes. Hova and I were trying to get ready at the same time, and that’s often when we’ll drag out the TV and some DVDs.

I practically begged, “Hey, we have a bunch of new videos from the library, do you want to watch something while Daddy and I get ready?”

“Nah,” she said without hesitation or temptation, “I’m going to make some Halloween heart decorations!”

And she did, with very little attention from us. She’s been making books and composing great six-year-old songs and drawing and doing messy experiments. Her independence is growing, and so is her creativity. Since school started she has been increasingly uninterested in television and it is so weird! And definitely more of a mess. She has made this choice, and she doesn’t feel like she’s missing out, and she doesn’t need TV to unwind. Sometimes I wish she’d be a little more flexible with her No TV way of life, but I guess we anti-commercial, green-eyed parents have to reap what we have sown.

Photo credit: Robert Couse-Baker