Should you have a No TV Summer?

Should you have a no TV summer? Should your kids take a break from screens? This summer we jumped off the deep end into the world of no television. Will we sink or swim? Let’s find out!

I was really looking forward to summer this year but…

I have to admit, I also had a bit of trepidation this year as summer approached.

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Too much screen time – Should we go TV free?

I had been feeling like screens had been taking over our home and I really, really didn’t like the feeling. So, I had been brainstorming ideas to make this summer more about the outdoors and family and less about screens.

Honestly, I couldn’t figure out how to cut out all screens and I wasn’t really sure that I wanted or needed to. So, I kept mulling it over and finally came up with a really basic, simple solution to cut out screen time, big time. How?

How we cut back (big time) on TV time

We turned of the TV for the summer. It might seem a big drastic. But I was going for drastic. If you want to see big changes, then you need to make big changes. Right?!

So anyway, the biggest change we made this summer is that we put the TV away.

Literally, put the television in the garage.

Oh, and boxed up all the DVDs and put them in the basement.

To be fair, our family doesn’t watch very much television normally(if we were going to compare ourselves with average Americans). We don’t have cable or network TV. We only watch DVDs and YouTube, BUT even with less options for entertainment, the television comes on more than we would like. It’s tricky somehow. It invades our home minute by minute. Is that too dramatic?! Or do you ever feel this way too?

How (and why) we put the TV away and said No TV for the WHOLE summer!

The funny thing is, I didn’t want to force this idea of a no TV summer on my family, so I was very hesitant to bring up the subject. But I did anyway. I just mentioned it. And you know what? Something completely unexpected happened. My seven year old jumped at the idea of going TV free for the summer.

Seriously. The child that is forever begging to watch a show wants to put the television away. Say, what?!

I would never have guessed that he would be on board with the idea, let alone be the main proponent of it. His line of thinking? We don’t want to waste time inside when we could be outside having lots of fun biking, playing ball, gardening…

So, how could we say no?! I honestly wasn’t sure if it would work or even if we should try it. But with our seven year old driving the idea we all jumped in and embraced our TV free summer.

How it’s going (what we are doing instead) with no TV

So far it has been really interesting. The kids have been staying up super late. Not watching TV, but playing outside or going to parks etc. Since it is light out, and nothing is catching our attention indoors, we tend to gravitate outside in the evenings and before we know it, it’s late and the kids are going to bed around 10pm. But, we have also had a great evening, and spend time together, so I’d call that a win.

Also, we’ve been reading a lot more. We are each reading more on our own (I am making great headway on my Summer Genre Reading Challenge) and we are also really getting into reading aloud as a family.

We are currently we are reading aloud Little House in the Big Woods, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street (so fun!). Yep, three at a time because, well, that’s how we roll. 🙂

Truth be told, I kind of miss chilling in front of a good show. But, this TV break is really pushing me in new ways. I see time that is wasted much more clearly now. I’m beginning to find time to finish many tiny projects that get put on the back-burner,

But, I’m willing to give this TV free summer experiment a try.

Over two months left of no TV

We still have over two months left to finish this experiment. Also included in that time are some trips to visit family, etc. So I’m sure my kids will get their fill of TV time then…ah well. But I’ll let you know how it all pans out at the end of summer…

Update – Click here to read how the rest of the summer went and to find out if we will ever do this again!

Are you living TV free?

Have any of you ever done something like this? Did it work out? I’d love to hear about it! Let us know in the comments!

Need some inspiration for great picture books to read to your kids? Here are some of our all time favorite picture books. Or check out this fun list of picture books that are based on true stories for lots of inspiration!