I live for traditions. Big holiday traditions and small little family routines. I have so many memories from my own childhood that center around the little family “traditions” my parents created for us, some intentional, some on accident and some just randomly repeated.
I hope to have my children grow up with the same love for family tradition that I have, and it’s fun to see our little patterns develop, like Sunday trips to the Farmer’s Market and early morning walks to the local coffee shop. We have always been screen free with our toddler. He has only really had access to Facetime with relatives and an occasional episode of PBS Kids when he or mommy were really really sick.
BUT, one of the things we are struggling to incorporate now that he is 3 is technology in the home in a meaningful way. We want him to have access to technology and be able to grow up with a healthy relationship with t.v. and the internet. We want him to be able to enjoy a movie without becoming addicted to all things screen time. And that’s hard to navigate. Like incredibly hard.
We started by letting him watch the occasional football game or baseball game and not being so militant about finding a table no where near a television at a restaurant (which is depressingly hard to find these days.) We wanted to stress that while the t.v. may be on, personal conversation and interaction is always the most important. And for the most part we have succeeded. When a game is on or we are out eating he rarely pays attention to the screen.
And while I don’t want daily t.v. to be a norm in our house, I do think it can be nice to snuggle up as a family and enjoy a special t.v. show or movie. So we decided to implement friday night “special movie night” in our house. We have been doing it for 3 weeks now and it’s a huge HIT! Every week we go to the library and he picks out (with a good deal of guidance) a special movie to bring home. Since we don’t watch t.v. he is easily convinced that the episodic dvds of t.v. shows are “special movies” which is great because, well, he scares easily. We let him watch Frozen for the first special movie night and he was devastated that we didn’t tell him it was scary. He was petrified of the snow monster and the bad guy that tries to hurt Elsa. He insisted he never wanted to see “that” Frozen again and that we should have gotten the “other” one. You know, the one all his friends love…because what he saw could not have possibly been the same movie. It was adorably endearing yet left him up all night with his little mind processing all that he saw.
After that we decided PBS kids dvds of t.v show compilations were a smarter way to go. Since the last two weeks consisted of Chuggington and Thomas, I was very excited to check out the new Peppa Pig: Sun, Sea and Snow dvd. Especially since we love reading books all about Peppa and her love of muddy puddles! We all LOVED the dvd. Plus it was aptly timed since we had a little rain in SoCal so we got to jump in our own (very rare) muddy puddles just like Peppa! Unfortunately now my son also thinks it could snow any day now and that perhaps it’s snowing at the beach?! (Try explaining that one to a 3-year-old). It was fun to watch Peppa experience adventures in snow and rain and it gave us a lot to talk about as a family after watching, which is always a good thing!
If you want a free copy of Peppa Pig: Sun, Sea and Snow on DVD, go to my Instagram @rockinmamalife and enter the contest today!
*I received a copy of Peppa Pig: Sun, Sea and Snow. There are affiliate links in this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
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