

It’s a hard rule to enforce – but worth it.
Despite being a believer in “never say never,” I am partial to the occasional blanket parental generalisation. Things like swimming and eating and cramping, eating crusts for curlier hair and insisting that reading books will only make you smarter.
We’ve added a new one for our mob, and it’s massive: no TV during the week.
Sometimes that definition needs refining, hence the never say never, but it basically applies from bedtime on Sunday night to after school on Friday afternoon.

The ‘no TV rule’ is up there in family significance with ‘dinner round the table whenever possible’, ‘pick up your junk’, ‘dog sleeps outside,’ ‘books at bedtime,’ ‘please,’ ‘thanks,’ and ‘if you say you’re going to be home by a certain time, make sure you do it.’ Simple stuff. Normal stuff. The rules pretty much everyone has.
It’s funny how times change.
We grew up in front of the TV. The Brady Bunch weren’t just a TV family, but they were my actual TV family. Like My Three Sons, The Fonz, Richie Cunningham – even Joanie and Chachi were like cousins to us. We didn’t spend hours in front of the telly, we spent weeks. Years, even. We loved it the way kids love fairy bread at birthday parties.
Top Comments
I limit TV to being after other more important things - homework, music practice etc during the week but allow them whatever time they like on the weekends. That said, whenever they have misbehaved and been banned from electronic devices they do come up with very creative and imaginative pursuits which I find very satisfying - great stories are written, even more books than usual are read and they even play with each other (and at 12, 12 and 15, that's saying something!).
I grew up with no tv other than very rare movie nights. I loved it! Well, not all the time, when I heard that other kids got to watch "cheeze tv" in the mornings, but mostly, we were so busy playing and doing other things that we didn't notice. Now I'm 25 and still only watch TV rarely.
I know it's not totally normal and people still look at me funny when I say I've never seen MKR or The Block, but its my normal and I'm ok with that :)
And btw, my parents weren't smug. I never remember them saying a single critical thing about tv-watching families & when I was at friends places I was allowed to watch whatever they watched. It just wasn't something we did.