Member-only story
My TV Children Keep Leaving
So much for television being an escape mechanism
When my daughter, Amelia, was a newborn, she was constantly at my side unless she was sleeping in her crib at night. I ceased watching television so I wouldn’t warp her brain — with three notable exceptions. She liked to nap in our living room on my lap for hours at a time, and she’d wake up just before Jeopardy started. My husband wasn’t due home from work for a couple of hours, so we spent a little time chilling out with Jeopardy and the news. After dinner, we’d watch Wheel of Fortune, mostly because she loved the fun music and spinning, colorful wheel.
It all just kind of happened
As a toddler, Amelia started watching PBS Kids once in a while and developed a love for a few shows. PBS shows seemed tamer than shows on other children’s networks, and we didn’t have cable in any case, so we went with it. Then one day, my husband and I found out you could watch quite a few shows for free, not to mention what you could see for a few dollars a month, and we fell down the streaming rabbit hole. Now, we have approximately three billion choices.
While my husband is usually binging one show or another on his iPad these days, I still only watch when Amelia watches, so now my hour or so a day of TV features family-centered shows…
