Joy Battista

"Joy Battista" stands for the Joy of John the Baptist at the presence of Christ.

"And how have I deserved that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, the moment that the sound of thy greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leapt for joy." Luke 1:43-44

This blog is dedicated to all who seek the Joy of Christ's presence in their own lives.
This blog is also dedicated to the unborn, for John the Baptist was an unborn when he leapt for joy at the presence of Jesus who was also unborn at the time.

WELCOME!!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

We Have Turned Off the TV!

Will and I decided to turn off the TV for the whole family and take away the computer from the 3 boys until further notice. The exception will be Saturdays and possibly Sundays during football season.

Lots of tears and frustration came from Michaela and the two older boys, Cole and Eric, as soon as we made the announcement. Now they know how I feel. I have been frustrated and worried about them. I have allowed them to watch too much TV and spend extra time on the computer while I started this blog and began connecting with people on facebook knowing that this wasn‘t the best use of their time.

I have felt that I have been able to keep pretty good track of what they have been watching and viewing but the boys behavior has shown me otherwise.

My 10 year old son, Cole, has been really disrespectful and sassy towards me pretty much all summer and I have not been able to get a handle on it. One way I have handled it has been to let him be occupied with the TV and computer so I wouldn’t have to deal with him. I should share that I haven’t just let the two older boys veg out on the TV and Computer. The amazing Lego world in their room would indicate this. The numerous baseball games and the concert held in the backyard along with swimming have kept them busy all summer as well.

The best thing so far that happened immediately after the announcement was a heart to heart conversation Will and I had with Cole. Because we took such a major step in behavior modification by taking away two of his favorite things he started to actually listen to us. He told us at first, “This is child abuse and my life is ruined!” He was very forceful with his proclamation saying it several times. My reply to him was, “Fine, call the police and report this to them.” That made him think and gave Will the opportunity to explain to him how he used to work with children who really did experience child abuse and what kinds of things they had gone through.

The conversation turned to our love for him and that we were trying to protect his soul from bad influences. We asked him if he loved Jesus and he said yes. We spent a good amount of time talking about God and life and where we are going in this world. On Cole’s way to bed, right after this conversation, he got his usual blessing from me and gave Daniel, the two year old, a hug. I asked him for a hug too and he gave me a big one!!

Michaela is very angry and began giving me the silent treatment about the TV (for about a half an hour). She feels this isn’t fair and blames it all on Cole. Eric, the eight year old is sick right now. So the first real challenge has been what to do with him. He was used to laying in our bed watching TV whenever he got sick. So far Tylenol has worked well enough that he has been kept busy playing games with me and the other two boys.

We are only a half a day into our new TV free world and even with the challenges so far I have peace in my heart. I really feel that this is the right thing to do for our family at this time. I hope we can stick to this plan, with lots of prayers and willpower on Will and my part I believe we can.

Do you have encouragement or stories for a TV free world? If so please share!

3 comments:

Jenn said...

That is amazing Jackie...I don't think I could do it! I will be praying for you and your family to stay strong!!!

fullofgracex9 said...

Ridding or reducing TV is sometimes such a major adjustment...for mom as much as for the kids, but in our experience, the "torture" only lasts a couple of days and then suddenly the attitudes change and everyone is playing nicely and with each other and the peace is restored. I can't remember which saint is said to have had a vision of every home having an black box that would create trouble. There is a lot of truth to that. Good job!!

Anonymous said...

I know this is from four months ago, but as a mom of three boys and a girl who are now older the answer was to not have cable (the local channels apparently "sucked" and had nothing on). We limited watching anything on the screen to weekends. We allowed them to watch videos then that we had pre-screened to make sure that the values they depicted were good. I found that on many comedic TV shows, the kids are always depicted as smart and the parents stupid, thus justifying the kids' mouthiness and modelling it for my kids as an appropriate behaviour.