Friday, June 18, 2010

In Your Face Little Bear!

Fatherhood Friday at Dad Blogs

(This post brought to you in conjunction with Fatherhood Friday over at Dad Blogs. Visit Dad Blogs to read other great fatherhood friday posts.)

As I've mentioned on this blog more than once, we are a household without television. Yup, we are that family who gave it up before our son was born. Sure, it was tough in the beginning. But now? Not so much. It's just not a part of our daily lives. We get by.

Video's, however, are another story. Mrs. LIAYF and I will generally watch an episode or two of an old television series late at night, long after we put our little guy to bed. We are currently working our way through Scrubs, which by the way, is an awesome show with the perfect mix between funny and poignant.

As for Lukas, he went his first two years of life without watching any media at all. Since then we have let him watch some short episodes of different kid series', either on DVD or the ipod, generally as reward for having had a good day. Most of the time he is playing with his toys, or we are reading to him.

But, as generally is the case when you give treats in small portions, Lukas went through a period where he always wanted more of these episodes to watch and was fairly 'unhappy' when it was time to turn them off. Thankfully, once these were turned off he would quickly turn his attention to something else and get over it.

Something different took place yesterday after I'd come home from work. I was dead tired from a short night of sleep and another long day of problem solving. All I wanted to do was to relax. Lukas, on the other hand, wanted to play a game of 'baseball' with me. It was an invented game complete with rubber balls, a paper towel roll bat, and an improvised cardboard mit. We had a blast running around the house playing this game he had concocted in his imagination.

After a good half hour of constant running back and forth, I needed a break. "Do you want to watch a video buddy?" I asked. "Hmmm...only if I can hold my bat." was his reply. At that point I slipped in a Little Bear DVD we'd checked out from the library and I made my way to the kitchen to check my email. It is not often that Mrs. LIAYF or I try to push media on our son, but this was one exception. Plus, they were short episodes.

Very short episodes.

Not 10 minutes later I could hear the episode ending. It is usually at this point where he runs in and asks for "Another one?" But instead he came in, bat in hand. "Do you want another Little Bear, buddy?" Mrs. LIAYF asked him. "No, I want to play more with Daddy!" was his excited reply.

That was all I needed to hear. Suddenly I wasn't tired anymore. Realizing that my son would rather play with me than sit around and watch a cartoon was energizing and amazingly validating as a father. It was the best thing I'd heard all this week leading up to Father's Day.

And with that we played another game of house baseball, acted goofy, and once again filled the house with the sound of laughter.

13 comments:

TempestBeauty said...

This is sweet :D

We too have no TV in our house, but will do a movie. Ronan has a terribly good attention span and will usually sit for the duration of a whole movie.

Sometimes it's all to easy to put in a video so I can get things done. Sometimes it's better to just get out of the house all together, and avoid the temptation :)

I love that he chose you!

Anonymous said...

That's pretty cool. We gave up TV well after having a child, but it has been one of our best decisions. We catch up on shows we like at night after little man is down either on the laptop or through our netflix account. It took a week or two to get our son used to no TV (he was only getting about an hour a day anyways), but we are so much better off. Especially when it comes to my sanity. Most of those shows are painful to watch.

squirtsdad said...

Awesome and good for you for taking him up on the 2nd round.

Unknown said...

Whatever! Give me some Team Umizoomi! I'm just kidding. Very admirable. I'm sure your son will appreciate it... when he goes out to purchase his first 50" Flat-Panel 3-D TV! :)

Babes about Town said...

That's a great story. I must confess we do have TV but we set limits on what we and the kids watch. It's easy to fall into the habit of plonking them in front of the box and it's totally cool that your boy would rather play with you than zone out.

Happy Father's Day, just wanted to let you know you're one of our Hot Daddy Blogs for June!

Stacy Uncorked said...

That. Is. Awesome.

Happy Father's Day! :)

Homemaker Man said...

In our home, house baseball is played with a shoe for a bat and a glove, whatever ball like device is at hand, and a ballcap. The first time we played, that equipment was accompanied by a uniform of a tshirt and nothing else. The Peanut would dress that way I mean, not me.

Homemaker Man said...

And Happy Father's Day!

Captain Dumbass said...

Good job, dad, and happy father's day.

SciFi Dad said...

Happy Father's Day, sir.

Well done, even if I find your lack of tv disturbing.

Slamdunk said...

Happy Father's Day.

Congrats to you and your wife making a difficult decision with the limited tv and holding to it. Your son will be much better off in the end--and his baseball playing will be head and shoulders above his peers.

Anonymous said...

The force is strong with you.

No TV. Damn.

Happy father's day brother...

Keith Wilcox said...

That's good :-) We sort of gave up TV. We still have cable but we watch it maybe an hour a week. The rest of the time we watch tv shows on netflix and play video games. I think TV is going to be worse of than radio. The only reason radio survived TV was that there are places you can't watch a tv. TV is going to completely die because playing video games and video on demand are going to kill it (at least how we know it today.)