No Television Review

After having the television on for all of his life, how long does it take for a child to come out of media addiction? As I have blogged, we've reached a plateau. But why? Having gone through an intense weight lose program, I've learned that plateaus are not bad. I believe that the reason we have plateaued in our Brain Balance program is due to withdraw from 8 years of media interference with his development. I'll come clean:
I've used the television as a crutch. Since he was an toddler, we've had the television on. First it was the wiggles or some other Disney show. Then is was Animal Planet shows and movies. Many of the daycare providers used movies. At one point he was watching over 2 hours per day at such a tender age. I can only say that it got worse before it got better. In the past three years I've worked on decreasing the hours. During that time we've noticed how much media consumed him. He behaved like an addict when he didn't get his fix. We also noticed that he became a true consumer. Not only was he sold on any toy that was advertise, apparently I needed whatever was advertised too. Man do those advertisers do a good job.
In the past four years we've decrease the tube time gradually. It wasn't easy but we managed to do it. In our recent decrease, we went from four to five hours in course of 3 days on the weekend to none. Zip. Zero. Zilch.
How did we get there? Again, I am not above bribery. When dealing with such fierce competition that gives such pleasure, how else do you transition from little to no television without serious withdraws. Between the weekly trips to a book store to purchase one book per child and the distraction of grandparents, our tv withdraws are somewhat painless. I couldn't have timed it any better.
So for now, I am blaming this plateau on media withdraw.