For some, it may be stretching it a bit too far to just turn off the TV cold turkey. If that’s the case, here are some ideas of things we’ve done in our home. We have a rule that there is no T.V. during the school week.  If there is a show that they really want to see, they can Tivo it.  Of course, we make exceptions, especially if they have completed their homework, for special programs, like big football games, that they may want to watch live.  To enforce this, we just  use the television parental control to limit the time they can watch to the weekend.

I’m always asking my boys what kind of memories that want to have when they leave home. I ask ‘do you want to remember us gathered around the ‘idiot box’ [as my father used to call it]? What about you?