When I was a little girl, around five or six (the same age my son is now), I decided that I wanted to be a dancer. My mother took me to the dance shop and we bought a black leotard, pale pink tights, and pink ballet slippers. I had long, brown hair and my mom practiced putting it in a bun in anticipation of my first ballet practice. Usually, I fussed when she tried to put my hair up, but I sat still on the cold toilet seat in our bathroom as she formed my hair into a pile at the top of my head.
We lived very rurally and it was 1984. Because the cable lines didn’t reach that far outside of town, we got one television channel, and with the help of an antenna. I was only allowed to watch cartoons for an hour on Saturday mornings. I waited all week to watch my favorite characters spring to life on the screen. I would make blankets forts on the floor and just lay there, the youngest child in a family of three—siblings still asleep upstairs. Usually, after a little while, my brother would wake up and come to join me on the floor of our living room.
Head over to Parenting.com to read the rest of this post:
http://www.parenting.com/…/heal…/why-i-let-my-child-watch-tv
