Meet Our New Babysitter
Our son is now just under 3 years old. He is at a age where he wants to be involved in everything his parents do. He is curious, ask questions in short he is very time consuming. In order to get some free time to do house work we had to find a babysitter.
Our new babysitter does not get tired, always provides unique entertainment and does not need to get paid. I bet you are wondering why your babysitter isn’t like that… Well our babysitter is the TV.
We once showed him a Disney cartoon, and he liked it so much that we bought more and more DVDs. Some of his favorites are listed below:
- Shrek 1 & 2
- Ice Age 1 & 2
- Cars
- Ratatouille
- Happy Feet
- Nemo
- And the list goes on
There are certain scenes in certain cartoons that we have to fast forward as they are too scary for him (he starts crying), but other than that, we put the DVDs on whenever we want him to sit still (such as when eating) or when he has to take a noon nap.
To be honest, we find it very convenient; however it is very disturbing what the aftermath of this will be. Surely it cannot be healthy for our 2.9 year old son to spend 1-2 hours in front of the TV every day ? But what are the alternatives ?
How can I cook, clean, wash, etc without always having him disturb (and sometimes annoy) me ? My husband sometimes gives a helping hand, but he is just as busy as me. And since he does a lot of construction work at home, I really don’t want our son to be with his Dad due to all his dangerous tools.
If we continue in this track I fear we are starting a bad addiction to electronics (TV, Internet, game consoles, etc) which I (when he was born) swore I would keep him away from (as much as possible) in order to develop a moral mind and soul.
I cannot stop from worrying that he will end up with trashed mindset, finding void tasks entertaining, without any sense of real-life application and long-term investment in life. It doesn’t take long to find programs on the TV that describes what I mean. Just look at MTV, reality TV, etc.
I’m not trying to get all holy here; I’m a part of this world too. But I’m sure parents can relate to what I am saying.
