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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"> </FONT><FONT
face=Arial>Tara Roberts wrote an excellent article about local families who are
raising their kids without commercial television. (see the text
below)</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I applaud those parents and believe they have made
the appropriate choice for their kids and themselves. We raised our
daughter (she's now 29) without TV, and we still do not watch TV (though we do
watch DVD's). No TV for us meant more time together, more games of
Scrabble, more family trips, but that has really helped mold our daughter into a
great woman and excellent mother and generally fun and
caring person.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>So, to anyone wondering how they can take control
of their family again, and break through their children's bonds to a
surley and crass consumerist culture, my advice is: end your relationship
with television.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=5>Tuning Out:
Local families say giving up TV has gotten them outside, into books</FONT></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; FONT-SIZE: 12px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><FONT size=5>By
Tara Roberts, Daily News staff writer</FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: 10px; font-color: gray">Saturday, August 11, 2007 - Page
Updated at 12:00:00 AM</P><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14px">
<P>Karl Erhard-Hudson knows exactly how being television-free has affected his
family.</P>
<P>"It's made it so I'm not in front of the TV whenever I get the chance," the
9-year-old Moscow resident said. "Then I have to go and play outside if I'm
bored."</P>
<P>Karl's mom, KarlaRose Erhard-Hudson, smiled at him.</P>
<P>"That's a good thing, right?" she asked.</P>
<P>The Erhard-Hudson family - Karl, KarlaRose, dad Joseph and daughter Jamie, 2
- is among several on the Palouse who have given up cable and satellite
television in favor of a more screen-free lifestyle.</P>
<P>KarlaRose said it was not a big decision for her family to turn off the tube.
In fact, they've never had television, except for watching movies and buying
cable for a month every two years to watch the Olympics.</P>
<P>"I don't understand how anybody has time to watch TV," she said. "I guess
it's easy for us because it wasn't a matter of weaning ourselves off it."</P>
<P>KarlaRose is an administrative assistant at the University of Idaho physics
department and Joseph is the IT manager for the Moscow Food Co-op. When the
family isn't busy with work or school, they like to go to their cabin in Montana
with friends, swim at the aquatic center or play games.</P>
<P>The family reads together every day - right now, Karl and Joseph are going
through the "Lord of the Rings" series. Karl loves playing with Legos and
playing outside in the family's yard.</P>
<P>They do have a TV, but it's only for watching DVDs and videos. KarlaRose said
nothing would sway them to hook up to cable.</P>
<P>"This way we can choose very explicitly what we pay attention to or not,"
Joseph said.</P>
<P></P>
<P><STRONG></P>
<P>Outside the box</STRONG></P>
<P>Barbara Brock, a recreation management professor at Eastern Washington
University, recently published "Living Outside the Box: TV-free Families Share
Their Secrets." She interviewed 500 families in 43 states about their
experiences.</P>
<P>Brock and her husband, Vern, stopped watching TV when their children, Sydney
and Adam, were toddlers. </P>
<P>As they talked to other families, "we realized being TV-free was very
strange," Brock said.</P>
<P>Now that her children are teenagers, they have full, busy lives that have
never included TV.</P>
<P>"They really have lots of hobbies, lots of interests," Brock said. "If we had
a TV we don't know what we'd give up to watch it."</P>
<P>Brock was inspired to begin her research after hearing the average American
spends four hours a day watching TV. She wondered what other TV-free families
did with their extra four hours, and placed an advertisement in three magazines
in search of families to survey.</P>
<P>She was overwhelmed by the response. Though she expected "TV-free families
might be pretty strange," she was surprised to find people of all ages and
incomes who were normal and happy.</P>
<P>Brock discovered that 70 percent of parents in TV-free households felt their
children got along better, 80 percent of adults felt their marriages were
stronger after giving up TV, and 90 percent of the families surveyed said they
never regretted their decision.</P>
<P></P>
<P><STRONG></P>
<P>Meet the families</STRONG></P>
<P>The Erhard-Hudson family isn't the only one to give up TV.</P>
<P>Bill Brock of Pullman (no relation to Barbara) hasn't watched TV since he was
little. Now that he and his wife, Dr. Kim Guida, have children of their own, the
TV is still restricted to DVD and videos only.</P>
<P>Even then, Bill Brock would prefer his daughters, Sage, 3, and Reed, 1, don't
get stuck to a screen at all. He wants them to be outside, getting dirt under
their fingernails.</P>
<P>"I would much rather my kids be outside playing in the leaves or canoeing
with me, chasing muskrats," he said. "I think there's a real danger of losing
your connection to the physical world by sitting inside, staring at an
incandescent screen."</P>
<P>Watching TV encourages complacency and deadens the acquisition of language,
Bill Brock said. Sage loves to talk to people and be read to, and her dad wants
her to hone those skills.</P>
<P>"To watch the ravening flame of literacy take light, it's exciting for a
parent," he said. "I want to see my daughter be expressive and glib and able to
hold her own, and she is."</P>
<P>Moscow residents Alice Swan and Nick Wallin also pick books over screens in
their family. Swan, house manager at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center, and
Wallin, conductor of the Washington State University orchestra and the
Washington-Idaho Symphony, got rid of their TV about five years ago.</P>
<P>They're glad to have their sons, Rex, 2, and Enzo, 2 months, grow up without
television.</P>
<P>"I hope that they'll have an appetite for reading, and an appetite for being
able to content themselves," Swan said.</P>
<P>Wallin said he wants the boys to be creative people.</P>
<P>"You can entertain yourself. You can find something to do on your own," he
said.</P>
<P>Swan and Wallin had not watched much TV in their seven years of marriage, but
both are glad the temptation is completely gone.</P>
<P>"The TV is like a black hole," Wallin said. "It sucks you in."</P>
<P>The two agreed nothing could convince them to get a TV again.</P>
<P>Kurt Queller and Ellen Kittell and their children, Jonathan Kittell-Queller,
14, and Emily Kittell-Queller, 18, unhooked the cable about three years ago.</P>
<P>Queller said the move was due in part to the expense of cable.</P>
<P>"We just realized we didn't watch enough TV," he said.</P>
<P>The family kept their TV set in a room separate from the main living space
and limited the amount of time they watched. Though they still watch movies,
they don't do it often.</P>
<P>"I'm really grateful about not watching TV," Queller said. "The temptation is
not there to just sit on the couch, veg out and channel surf."</P>
<P></P>
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<P><STRONG>Staying in tune</STRONG></P>
<P>Turning off the TV doesn't mean hiding from the world at large.</P>
<P>With radio, print journalism and the Internet, it's possible to keep up with
news and pop culture, the families said. With DVDs, it's easy to pick and choose
which shows to watch, and how much time to spend watching them.</P>
<P>Queller said he and Kittell are hooked on "Grey's Anatomy," and watch it on
DVD.</P>
<P>The Erhard-Hudson parents like "Futurama" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,"
but usually end up watching children's shows for Jamie and anime for Karl.</P>
<P>Wallin loves sports and goes out with his friends to watch games. Without a
TV at home, he doesn't spend weekends glued to football games anymore, and that
makes Swan happy.</P>
<P>Barbara Brock said the main problem with TV isn't so much the programming,
but the way it makes families give up time together to watch.</P>
<P>"Everybody's separate anymore," she said. "There's not just one TV and it's
sapping everybody's time."</P>
<P>Watching a few movies or TV shows a week isn't so bad, Barbara Brock said.
She worries more about the time children spend with "multitasking media" -
things like TV, computer games and video games - and how it affects their
ability to interact with others.</P>
<P>She wonders if future children will be able to carry on conversations and
entertain themselves.</P>
<P>"I just think it's really important that we work on getting ... happiness and
fulfillment out of our time," she said.</P>
<P>The families said the temptation to watch TV is sometimes there when they're
visiting friends and family with TVs.</P>
<P>"It's really, really annoying if it's in a living space," Jonathan said. If
one person's watching, "you sort of get attracted to it; you just start watching
it."</P>
<P>Bill Brock said he knows his daughters will be exposed to TV as they grow up,
but he's not too concerned.</P>
<P>"My daughter is gonna see TV," he said. "But in my house, other things are a
priority."</P>
<P><STRONG></P>
<P>Time to give it up?</STRONG></P>
<P>The families all said they'd encourage others to turn off the television
permanently.</P>
<P>"More people would be better served by following this example," Bill Brock
said.</P>
<P>Wallin and Swan said they read about an "experiment" to sit in front of a
turned-off TV for 30 minutes to realize how much time watching TV takes up.</P>
<P>"If anybody's thinking about giving up TV, they should try that," Swan
said.</P>
<P>Barbara Brock said most of the families in her book said quitting cold-turkey
was the best way to go.</P>
<P>"If a parent can handle 20 minutes of whining, their child will find
something else to do," she said.</P>
<P></P>
<P><STRONG>Tara Roberts</STRONG> can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 234, or
by e-mail at troberts@dnews.com.</P></SPAN></FONT></BODY></HTML>