Turn Off the WHAT?!

It's National Turn-Off the TV week in our house. If Will doesn't watch any TV, computer games or video games Monday-Friday, he gets an extra recess at school. He decided on his own that he wanted to participate and so far it's been going surprisingly well. He's taking the whole thing very seriously. He got out of bed to ask Damon something the other night and shielded his eyes from the TV screen where Damon was watching TV in the living room!

By the way, in case you were wondering, Turn-Off the TV week does NOT apply to parents (who have to watch Dancing With the Stars) or younger siblings who are home alone all day long. It DOES however apply to younger siblings the minute the older sibling gets home from school. It's very confusing to Sam, but he's going with it. (Am I hypocrite?!)

Every day so far Will has come up with ideas for things to do all on his own. Monday he played outside. Tuesday he announced he was making an art project, and we called his school friend to come down for awhile to help. We went on a family walk and he's done lots of reading, legos, and pretending. It seems that we've had lots more conversation too. I found out that one time when Will was at a local indoor play place, there was a boy with one hand who said to Will and his friend, "Stop staring at my hand, or I'm going to beat you with it!" Will told me he had been staring, because he'd only seen one other boy with one hand in his life, but that boy had been nice and they'd become friends on the playground, whereas this boy had been mean. We talked a bit about why the boy had said that, and if Will could have done anything differently. We've also had more conversations about school and the goings on of the class bully. (It's so hard to know what to tell Will about how to handle that!) We also had an interesting conversation that Will initiated with, "Mom, what do you think the future is going to be like?" and he proceeded to tell me all about what he thought schools of the future would be like. In case you're wondering, you'll be able to send your homework to your teacher by a tube, the teacher will be a robot, and your shoes will have rockets in them.

So far there has been no whining, no complaining, and no begging (about the TV, anyway!) Who knows what Will will have in store for us today when he gets home from school!