By Elizabeth Bobrick
SPECIAL TO MSNBC

 They can be playing outside, happy as can be, but if they notice that it’s time for one of those carefully allotted programs, boom, the skates are off, the swings are left swinging alone, and the girls are still as potted plants before the blue glow. Ditto for baking cookies, reading, doing artwork, playing board games or dress-up: these are but fillers in between the precious moments of television.
       I can’t stand quietly by and witness this inversion of my values. I take action.
       SUNDAY MORNING: Intervention time. I announce to our daughters, 4 and 8, that there will be no television from this evening until Saturday morning.
       I try to explain this. I say that it’s time for them to see that books and games and crafts and playing outside are just as much fun, too. Just like the Berenstein Bears did in “Too Much Television,” we’re going to take a break from TV. “OK,” they say mildly. My husband and I look at each other in surprise. Maybe they’d already had enough. Maybe they know, deep down inside, that staring at the TV isn’t really good for them.
       MONDAY: Junkies have already had enough, and they know, deep down inside, that smoking crack isn’t really good for them, but woe betide anyone who gets between them and the little vial.
       When the kids come home from school the next afternoon and head in the usual direction, I say, “Uh-uh. No TV for a week, remember? Now, let’s ...”
       I get no farther. The 4-year-old, a remarkably sunny child, the wonder of her pre-school, cries for a solid half-hour. The 8-year-old is enraged. She shouts, “Why can’t we watch TV? It’s not fair! We always watch TV! What are we supposed to do?”
 I remain calm. For about 15 minutes. Then I put Andrea in her room until she stops crying, and I make Katie do her homework. When they are quiet, I call them together again. “Let’s play Parchesi,” I say. This is something they both like to do. Usually.
       We sit on the floor. Andrea’s knees are touching Katie’s. “Get away!” Katie says emphatically. “Get over to your own spot!” Andrea starts crying again. I calm her down. We play for about twenty minutes. Andrea gets frustrated (strategy is still beyond her), and when it is her turn she throws the dice under the heating vent. This makes both me and Katie mad. I separate them again. I remind myself: of course it will be hard. At first.
       TUESDAY/WEDNESDAY: A blur. We bake, and eat, a lot of cookies. This is my idea. I am losing hope that they will put on puppet shows or weave simple but handsome cloth on the lap loom they got for Christmas.
Still, they do manage to come up with a new source of entertainment all on their own: They fight like stray dogs at a dumpster.
       I can see what is happening. They are punishing me. I turn into the looney type who scares her children by shrieking, bug-eyed, “I can’t stand it anymore! Stop it! You’ve got to stop it!”
       In the lulls caused by my breakdowns, the 8-year-old plays teacher and gives her sister D’s. Why? Because she can. Same reason I can declare TV off limits.
       THURSDAY: I cave. Sort of. I get an educational video out of the library (the 4-year-old sits on the floor of the children’s section wailing, “Why can’t we get Peter Pan?”) about a city we are going to be visiting over spring break. Still, when we get home, they literally jump up and down as I put it into the VCR. It is meant for adults, and is mildly interesting. They want to watch it again as soon as it is over. At this point they’d demand an encore of “My Dinner with Andre.”
       FRIDAY: Major distraction blunts the craving. The little one goes with her father to visit her grandmother. Before they leave, my husband and I very carefully ignore the question of whether she will watch television there. I know he’s going to let her, he knows I know, and we have come to a tacit agreement that sometimes, some things are better left undiscussed. The big one stays with me for an endless Brownie Scout fest that evening. I miss a new episode of “Homicide” because I am too tired to watch it when we finally come home and she is in bed.
       SATURDAY: Re-entry. They toddle downstairs and watch a Rugrats marathon.
       We stay in bed. Two hours later, when I say that they’ve been watching enough, I get the same moans as before, and when I say we are going skating I hear again the cries of the oppressed. I admit defeat of plan (to self). Nonetheless, the TV goes off, and they don’t look at it again until we go over to our friends’ house for dinner and all the kids watch “Antz.”
       SUNDAY: I ask Katie if she has learned anything from not watching TV. “Yeah,” she said. “Not watching TV is boring.” I ask Andrea the same thing. Her answer? “I learned that having a mommy is .... dumb.”
       I ask myself: What have I learned? Something I would have known already, if I’d ever spent time with serious junkies: Detox is not supposed to be fun, and it doesn’t always work.
       Later that evening Katie looks up at me from her bath. “Mom? You know that going for a week without TV thing? That gave me an idea. What if Andrea and I go for a week without fighting?”
       “Wow,” I say. “That would be great.” (Be still my beating heart!)
       “And if we do, you give us 10 dollars. Each.”
       I laugh, but I’m thinking it over. It makes sense, to an 8-year-old, anyway, who knows deep inside that giving up your favorite thing without also getting a tangible reward is ...“dumb.”

Copyright 1999, MSNBC

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