A follow up about cable

We still have cable TV at our house. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. For example, I got sucked into Discovery Channel the other night and learned a lot from Mythbusters and Man vs. Wild and the Alaska Experiment. Maybe I learned something. Maybe I didn't. But I sat there for a LONG time.
Those tricky short people in the house know which numbers are Nick, Disney and Cartoon Network. What kid growing up around here with cable doesn't know that Nick is channel 33. It was channel 33 when I was a kid with cable!!! Anyway, we also have a Wii. In theory, if you are playing the Wii, you are also getting "exercise" because you have to move around to get it to work, or whatever.** Well, the children asked me the other night if they could play Wii before bed. Well, I was on the computer (of course) and it wasn't quite time for bed yet, so I said yes. Time passes. I hear nothing from them. Naturally I am distracted from the clock thanks to this nice machine that sucks my time away. When I finally finish whatever useless stuff I was doing, I realize exactly HOW MUCH time had past! Oh my! It is certainly time for them to stop playing Wii and go to bed. Well...I go upstairs to see what game has kept them quiet for so long. DISNEY CHANNEL!!! SINCE WHEN DOES DISNEY CHANNEL COUNT AS PLAYING WII????????
I think they came up with some reason like, "We couldn't get the Wii to work..." Whatever. The other day, when I got a spare moment: I grabbed my remote and learned how to block channels! (***see my TV philosophy at the bottom of this post) Disney, Nick and Cartoon Network no longer show up as choices. Hee hee. The kids were a little puzzled the next time they did channel flipping. Hee hee. I also put on stronger parental control locks. Who wants their 5 y/o running across some of that stuff?
Anyway, KIDS - obey your parents or your channels may disappear as well...


**You have to be a little bit active when using the Wii until a good friend loans you Game Cube stuff and you just sit around for many hours playing Mario Party or Super Smash Brothers. ;-)


***Jennifer's philosophy on watching TV -- TV = time vacuum. Goodness knows how much time you can waste in front of that thing...of course...the computer (for me) is just as bad.
When I was a kid, we watched TV. I remember some shows that we watched...mostly I remember watching KET (PBS), Saturday morning cartoons, and some Friday night comedy stuff. When I was in 6th grade, my mom cut us off. We could only watch TV on the weekends: 5pm Friday - 5pm Sunday. School grades came up. Hmm...could there be a correlation between these two facts?? Anyway- you know how new parents often say they won't use the TV as a babysitter? Well, I said that too...at first. It is just WAY too convenient to plop your kid in front of PBS for a while. They are learning something, right?? Hmm....as they got older though, that had to come to an end. Although watching Jay-Jay the Jet Plane with Rebekah will be remembered always. :-) Now, in my household, we have the weekend rule. Lately, as I've been homeschooling, I've remembered that I learned a lot of simple things one needs to learn for school from PBS shows. So if my kids ask to watch "Between the Lions" or "CyberChase" this summer, I'll probably say "ok." PBS did not vanish from our TV.
For the record, the only show I watch on a regular basis is Survivor. (I'm a Sunday afternoon NFL junkie during football season).
If someone in my family feels the need to watch SpongeBob or something Disney...pop in a movie. At least then you don't have to watch those horrid commercials!!!! Commercials are one of the biggest problems with TV. Wonder why kids are greedy or have a poor self-image or have ADD/ADHD? Let's blame commercials. Maybe that's another reason we watch PBS.