Death To The DVR

The DVR is ruining my children.

It started out simple enough. We purchased it awhile back, just for our own purposes. It is not our fault that many of our favorite shows just happen to fall on Thursday night. With our trusty DVR, we are able to record everything and watch them on our own time. Basically, we pay a little extra each month for our time-no commercials and the luxury of watching what we want, when we want to.

Yes-we are spoiled.

Until recently, we kept this luxury somewhat of a secret from the kids. When I saw something on that they might like, I would record it and it just "happened to be on" when I showed it to them. I did not want them falling into the trap of thinking they could watch whatever they wanted whenever they wanted to.

You know-like we do.

However, they have become wise to the system. They have caught us pausing the television so we can hear the extremely important information being broadcast over the air to our living room. Is it our fault that they loudly fight with each other right when we are trying to listen to the news or watch an important football play?

We now have a daughter who knows how to work the remote control. I feel like I have lost a little bit of control. And this whole learning to read thing is really inconvenient. Abby can tell what it on when I am just browsing the menu and she knows to press 301 for Noggin. I can no longer "lie" and say nothing is on-she knows the truth! Now I have to be a good parent and just lay down the law?

The icing on the cake happened this morning. I started to run the vacuum while they were watching a show and Abby said, "It's okay, Mom-I'll just pause it."

Excuse me? Pause it? I distinctly remember my mom running the vacuum or needing me to help her with something right when my favorite show was on at its most crucial scene. There was no pausing. I just missed the scene and life went on.

(Thank goodness Saved by the Bell is on numerous channels at any given time on any given day-I can now see the scenes I was missing during my mom's cleaning spree on Saturday mornings.)

It is not just the DVR-everything around them is instant and at their command. Wait to develop pictures? No way-we have digital! Open an encyclopedia to learn about a topic? What are those? We have the internet! Fast foward or rewind a tape? Why would you do that-tape is for sticking things together.

There is no escaping this world of "convenience," but I try every day to slow the kids down. The world is never at our command for whatever we need and they need to start learning it now. I guess I could start by getting rid of the DVR...hmm, maybe not. That would really mess up my Thursday nights.