Category Archives: television

Balancing Technology & Kids

Try as we might not to fall into the technology trap, it’s hard not to at times with so many handy gadgets.  Since the time Enzo was a baby he’s been infatuated with our cell phones, but we held off on letting him use ours for a long time. When we did give in, I had a phone that he couldn’t really access anything on easily, so he’d just talk on it and that was it.  Then he realized our phones did so much more and he wanted to be able to watch videos of himself non-stop, so he’d commandeer our cell phones and not want to give them up. We figured it wouldn’t hurt to just give him my old phone and remove pretty much everything except for the gallery of photos and videos. Our little narcissist could spend hours watching videos of himself. Ha ha.

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More recently I decided to put an app on his phone that teaches the alphabet, numbers, shapes, and colors. It’s really simple to use and he loves it.  I figure since its educational there isn’t that much harm in it.  I am aware of the articles out there that warn against the dangers of too much screen time (mostly TV) for young kids, but we do try and keep it to a minimum.  We don’t have cable and for a long time even if Enzo wanted to watch a show he would only watch about 5 minutes and then run around – we realized he just liked the noise in the background. 

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Times are changing, though, and he’s paying more attention to what he watches, which means we also need to be more aware of how often the TV is on.  We also discovered that while Enzo never really noticed the TV as a baby, Phoebe is very aware and easily distracted by the magical screen when it’s on. Some mornings we bribe Enzo with Bob the Builder or Thomas when he doesn’t want to get dressed and Phoebe will roll over and look up at the TV or if I position her facing away from it, she’ll look at it upside down or try to scoot so she can see what’s on. It’s pretty funny, but it makes me realize we’ll need to be much more aware this time around so that Phoebe isn’t overexposed.

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One thing Josh and I have definitely agreed on is that neither kiddo will have their own TVs in their rooms until they’re much older and tablets and other technology will be something we monitor closely and won’t allow them to use on a regular basis.  We appreciate that in this day and age it’s beneficial that they know how to use these items, but it doesn’t mean we want them attached to a screen all the time either.  Just another reason that Josh and I have decided we need to put our own phones down in the evenings until after the kids go to bed (minus a quick photo snap here and there). 😉

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Mad Men

*Edit* I am now addicted to this show and love it. 🙂

So I just started watching ‘Mad Men’ which airs on AMC (I just started watching the first season from Netflix) and I’m pretty hooked. For those of you not familiar with the show you can learn everything you could ever want to know (and more) on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men.

It takes place in the early 60’s in New York at a prestigious advertising agency. This drama seems bent on showing the worst of everyone. So far in three episodes, it seems like no one is happy… most of the married men are having affairs, the wives are gossipy and unhappy in their loveless marriages, women in the office seem to think (and it was probably unfortunately true) that the only way to move ahead is to show off as much flesh as acceptable for the time, flirt with anyone (married men) and basically be easy if it means a promotion or possible marriage so you don’t have to work anymore. Most of the characters I want to smack upside the head, so why am I so hooked on this show now!? Maybe it’s this sick fascination watching all of this and wondering if that’s how it actually was back then… granted, it’s a drama and a televsion show, so you aren’t getting a broad picture, but it would be nice and refreshing to see one or two characters that don’t sleep around, and aren’t lemmings, like perhaps one strong female character who realizes how demeaning it is to have men talk to her or about her likes she’s a piece of meat and has some self-respect because so far none of them seem to. They’re all bent on flirting and being catty and getting free meals out of men (married or not). Also, it would be nice to have a few male characters who don’t all behave like horny bastards and treat every woman like they’re there for one reason only. I’ll watch the rest of the first season and see how it goes. Maybe the sick fascination will wear off the frustration will set in because I’m tired of seeing the worst of people represented.