t.v.! t.v.!

We are starting on a little boy t.v. diet at our house. Our first indication that they were getting too obsessed with it came when one of Davey's first words was "t.v.! t.v.!" said while clapping his little hands on his thighs in gleeful anticipation of watching t.v. Our next indication that they were getting too obsessed with t.v. came when AJ started throwing a major fit when the t.v. was turned off and kept whining for the rest of the night about how he wanted to watch more of it.

We have come up with a new plan to give AJ two tickets that are good for 30 minutes of tv each per day. He can use them whenever he wants--first thing in the morning, later in the day--but once they are gone, that's it--no more t.v., no whining. If he whines for t.v. after his tickets are gone, the rule is that he loses one ticket for the next day. We'll see how this goes. We just implemented Monday, and so far he liked the idea of "paying" for t.v. with tickets, but we still have a bit of lingering requests when he get to the end of the day and doesn't have any tickets left. Joe thinks the volume of requests to watch t.v. has decreased dramatically in a week, though.

I have spotted two potential problems with this system--(1) Sesame Street, the only show on t.v. that I think is worth a two-year old watching, costs two tickets instead of one because it is an hour long, which may make him less inclined to choose it and (2) there can be no exceptions, ever, for any reason, or the whole rules system will fail when he realizes that we can make exceptions. We'll see how it goes.