Why I Hired the Television Babysitter
Posted by Laurie
I admit it, my one year old son Blake watches Sesame Street on DVR in the morning and during many meals.
Actually, that’s not entirely true anymore.
When I made that admission last week at my son’s class, the teacher kindly admonished me. She explained, “When the TV is on, your child gets into a zone-like trance. That may be okay at 6am when you’re too tired to entertain him, but meal-time TV watching is the beginning of bad eating habits. Television makes your child zone out so that he has no idea what’s going into his mouth.”
Watching TV causes my son to zone out? But that’s exactly why I use TV, to zone him out so he’ll sit still in his high chair long enough to eat a healthy breakfast or lunch… or dinner. I never thought TV was educational (and the Baby Einstein refund practically confirms this), but I also didn’t think moderate TV watching was harmful.
I gave my “defense,” to the teacher and other parents, and they offered me a key piece of advice: Drop the TV and change the environment. If my son won’t eat because he wants out of his high chair after three minutes, move him to a booster seat. If he needs something to distract him during the meal, don’t use TV, call a grandparent and put him or her on speakerphone. But the best advice of all is what I’d heard for a while, but gently ignored: Have dinner together as a family. When a child watches his parents eat and he’s engaged in the conversation, it calms him down and encourages him to eat.
You might wonder why we don’t we eat dinner together. Once our son started eating solid food my husband and I got into a pattern: feed the baby and when he’s finished, only then we would eat. That’s how I’d manage breakfast and at night we’d wait until Blake went to sleep to eat our dinner together. We did this because it’s stressful to eat with a baby (imagine food on the floor and spilled drinks), and my husband and I like having dinner time to relax and talk to each other. A family dinner would mean eating earlier and it would mean that on occasion when my husband is home past 6:30pm, eating without him.
The day after I received the helpful advice, I turned off the TV and sat down to eat with Blake. Just a few days later, the results were in: It was clear that Blake was much happier eating with his parents.
On this blog I’m always writing about how to keep the couple’s relationship strong through pregnancy and parenthood, but that has to be balanced with keeping the family strong. As difficult as it was for my husband and I to acknowledge, the time had come for us to give up our coupledom dinners in favor of family dinners (on most nights).
My husband and I will still have that couple time after Blake goes to sleep, though we have to make sure not to waste that time checking e-mail or catching up on work rather than being with each other. Plus we’ll still have our date nights for one-on-one meal times, but now dinner time is for the family. What we do after Blake goes to bed is our business.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 11:31 am and is filed under Family, Health & Wellness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.
Good post! My kids (7 and 5) have always watched a bit of TV (some days more than others!), but we never did the TV at mealtimes thing — for one thing, we only have one TV and it’s not in or near the kitchen! It’s not always easy to eat meal after meal with messy babies and toddler, and now with schoolage kids who don’t exactly let my husband and I have a decent conversation over our food, but we enjoy the family time. Oh, and I hear you about the Baby Einstein vids: I just blogged about this: http://www.confessionsofameanmommy.com/my-babys-no-einstein-or-why-i-wont-be-asking-the-baby-einstein-co-for-my-money-back/
Here’s what I do: Have some appetizers with my son at his dinner time and then I eat again with my husband after my son goes to bed. It’s really hard to eat with a toddler and I don’t blame you for finding a way around that, but I think my suggestion (which I follow) gives you the best of both worlds.