Last Monday, my wife and I decided that we were going to shut off the television for the week.

You can read my ruminations that brought us to the decision here, but I thought it appropriate to give a little update on how things went.

First of all, I really wish I could say that this was some sort of particularly eye-opening experience for our family…

…but I’m not sure that would be an honest appraisal.

Not that we are ignoring lessons learned or the value of doing this, but just that, for the most part, it simply wasn’t a big deal for any of us.

It’s possible we picked a bad week to try it if we were looking for a big revelation, simply because I feel like we probably would have already been watching a lot less TV in the evening this week. We’ve had my wife’s parents visiting since last Friday, so their impending arrival necessitated a lot of cleaning and preparing that would have been using up our evening TV time anyhow. There was no “No TV” rule in place this past week, but we’re naturally watching less simply because we’re busy doing other things together. For Tucker, playing with Grandma and Grandpa usually trumped wanting much Elmo time — something I am sure they loved.

Anna would admit that No TV Week was a little harder for me than it was for her, and she would be right. Obviously with her being at the office for most of the day, the major differences for her amounted to every evening meal being eaten at the table, and some cleaning/organizing in the evening after Tuck was asleep that we would have been doing anyhow. As an early-to-bed kind of gal, her TV watching was already pretty limited.

Tucker took to No TV Week like a champ. He still asked for Elmo every morning. And his confusion at times was very clear — certainly when he couldn’t figure out how to turn the TV on all of a sudden (it was unplugged), but particularly when we started simply singing him the “doot doots” before bedtime rather than watching Final Jeopardy! together. Overall he took it in stride. He didn’t whine or beg all that much, and generally was as easygoing about No TV as he is about most things. This week, even though allowed some TV, he does seem less interested. But as I mentioned, the presence of Grandma and Grandpa might be a part of that, so we’ll see what happens in the weeks to come.

The week was definitely hardest on me. Not just because it gave me one less highly effective way to occupy Tucker while I tried to get things done, but also, I recognize, it was harder because I do watch more TV than either Tucker or Anna. I still don’t think I watch that much TV, but I am much more of the habit of having it on as background noise. And there are a handful of shows that the TiVo knows I enjoy watching sometimes, while Tucker naps or later in the evening when everyone else is asleep. As I mentioned above, this was never going to be a week where we watched as much TV in the evening as usual, but when the week was up and we looked at all of the shows waiting on the TiVo to be watched, many  of them were just for me.

Eating together as a family in the evening is important to us, especially as Tuck gets older. I don’t think either of us think it’s feasible to make a hard-and-fast rule at this point that we’ll never eat dinner watching TV, but we’re committed to not making that a habit.

When the weather and car-availability allowed it, not having the TV here to distract also forced me to get out of the house more during the day with Tucker, and I’m sure he appreciated that.

I also got a lot more reading done this past week than I have been able to find time for recently. I’d like to say it was more edifying material than Stephen King, but dang, “Under the Dome” was really good!

So as No TV Week worth it? I think so.

Even if we are now behind on Survivor.

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