This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mariah Smith. It has been edited for length and clarity.
After my youngest child was born, we were all in survival mode, and it felt like the TV was always on to keep my older two kids entertained.
I knew I needed to do something about the amount of screen time they were having, but I was too exhausted to do much about it.
And then I didn’t have a choice.
My 8-year-old found a horror film
We’ve got a smart TV, and when you turn on the menu, completely unwarranted advertisements for movies and shows pop up in the toolbar.
My 8-year-old managed to find a trailer for a horror film, something really scary about an exorcism. It was awful and led to her being frightened at night.
One night, I lay with her in bed as she cried and thought, “We’re done with the TV.”
I hid our remote the next day and told my two older kids it was broken until I could figure out what to do about screens. The first few days without TV weren’t great. They were constantly asking to watch something.
But surprisingly, they adjusted much more quickly than I had imagined, and within a week, they rarely asked to watch a show.
We started watching VHS
I started looking for fun technology they could use instead. We got a boombox and CDs and started listening to the radio. I found my old Game Boys, and we played with those too.
The kids loved all of it. It felt like new technology to them, even though it was from two decades ago.
I remembered my parents had kept all of the VHS tapes we watched as kids, all the classics. After buying an old TV, I brought the tapes to our house, and we started watching TV the old-fashioned way.
They were fascinated.
It’s been a year since we started using the little TV and VHS tapes, and I’m so pleased with the results.
I can leave them to watch stuff alone
As a mom trying to juggle three young kids and everything else life throws at me, I can’t always sit down with my children to watch TV.
Now, I can leave them to watch something and trust that they’ll be safe. Everything they watch has been vetted by me because I’ve seen all the films before. There won’t be any age-inappropriate adverts popping up unexpectedly.
I feel like I have much more control over what they’re watching, and that I’m able to keep them safer this way.
The kids argue with each other less and are nowhere near as agitated as they used to be.
Because the TV isn’t always on anymore, my older two children have become more creative. My daughter has taken up embroidery and knitting.
I’ve noticed that, for some reason, the children disengage much more easily from this little TV with the VHS player than they did from our big smart TV. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the smaller screen or the slower-paced storylines. Either way, it’s easier to turn off without a total tantrum.
They also can’t choose to watch YouTubers like they can on streaming services. I don’t want my children watching YouTubers, but I found it nearly impossible to remove that option from Netflix or Disney+.
Using VHS tapes creates a barrier of sorts to watching TV, so we watch a lot less of it now. It’s not as simple as pressing a button and having thousands of options available. You have to make sure the tape has been rewound, sit through the trailers, watch the film, and then rewind it again afterward. Once the film is over, the TV goes off. It feels like a natural ending.
What has surprised me most is how my own body has reacted to less TV and less background noise. My nervous system doesn’t feel as overwhelmed as it once did. I feel much calmer.
We’ve recently added DVDs to our collection because there’s more variety available. My kids love Bluey, so we’ve bought DVDs with all the episodes.
Although it started as a quick decision to switch to VHS tapes, I’m incredibly grateful we did it. It’s not that we’ve gone backward in time, but that we’ve found a slower, calmer way of living that works far better for our family.
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