Parenting Tip - Boycott Commercials-Make Your Own!

Commercialism.  Oh my gosh.  Are you sick of the tv commercials showing every toy imaginable and tired of your children begging you for everything they see?  If only you could ban tv watching from Oct through Dec.  I know lots of you do ban tv watching, and I applaud you.  But when you take something away, sometimes you have to put something back in.  Here’s an idea.

 

Let your kids watch videos.  NO, NOT VCR movies on tv. I’m talking about home videos.  All those videos you take at picnics and birthdays and holidays.  Make a folder of them and let your children watch them over and over again.  That’s what one of my daughters does.  She doesn’t have a tv, but her children love to watch family videos.

 

With this idea, you are actually dovetailing in several areas.  You are promoting and preserving family history by helping your children bond with the cousins and grandparents and their siblings they see on the movies and by reminding them of family traditions and family fun times.

 

You are encouraging memory recall and sequencing skills.  Kids are great at remembering details and when they watch the same family videos over and over again, they notice more details, recall the sequence of events and can see cause and effects that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

 

But what if you don’t have any family videos?  Start taking some!  Better yet, let your children take some.  Give them your camera (not an expensive one, of course) and have them make a home tour video so you can remember your house in years to come.  Have them make a video of a sibling singing a song or saying the Pledge of Allegiance or reciting a poem.  Have them make an informational or educational video on “How to Make a Peanut Butter Sandwich” or “How to do a Somersault on the Trampoline.”  Let them make their own commercials trying to sell something.

 

Hey wait, what a great gift idea.  Buy an inexpensive camera for your child and see what fun he will have.  Creativity will ooze from his snapping photo finger tips. You never know, this just may be the stimulus for the next great Steven Spielberg.