Annette Naake

For Aime (and anyone else interested):

I was pretty strict about my first son's tv viewing... he could only watch
so much a day, only certain shows, etc. As a result (I believe), he was
always asking to watch TV. It seemed to become the most important thing in
the world to him. (There's a boy in our Scout troop who is allowed half an
hour of TV a day. Guess what he does the entire time when the meetings are
at our house.)

My second son (4) had pretty much unlimited access, but he's much less
interested. He does watch TV -- Rugrats and his "Walking with Dinosaurs"
video are his faveorites -- but he spends much more time drawing, looking at
books, building forts, playing with Legos, playing with his brother,
whatever.

I just decided not to make a big issue out of it any more. The older guy no
longer seems to eagerly pine for TV at all times, though he too still
watches a couple hours a day.

I also have to say that having watched some of the cartoons they like
(Rugrats, the Wild Thornberrys, Ed Edd and Eddy, Spongebob) I find the shows
about 100 times more literate and wittier than the cartoons were when I was
a kid.

My older boy is finally picking up a book and going into a quiet room to
read for pleasure -- no prompting. He's 8. I have always been a bookworm, we
read together a lot and I had always hoped he would come to share the joy I
get from books. But I decided I would never tell him to read, because that
would undermine the whole point of doing it because you love it. I took
great encouragement from a wise friend of mine who has two teenage boys. She
observed that she knows few boys who "love to read." But she knows lots of
men who do.

Annette





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