“I’ve had it. Had it. HAD IT. It’s the same thing every night. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s not hard. It really isn’t. You need to brush your teeth, wash your face, wee, get into your pyjamas and got to bed. GO. TO. BED. But no, we fight about it every night. Every night. For five years now. I’ve asked nicely. And not so nicely. Nothing has worked. Not even the laminated night time routine poster I created for you which is stuck on the fridge. But now, I’m done. No more Mrs Nice-Guy. You’ve pushed me too far. No more TV. For a week.”
I slammed shut the door firmly to drive home the point.
Last Friday, I finally lost it. The routine night time fight about the night time routine finally got to me, and so for the first time I decided to punish my daughter for her lack of cooperation. A total TV ban. For a week.
As I closed the door and walked toward the kitchen, I realised I had to follow through. Announcing such a precise punishment, I could not afford to backslide. No TV for a week. We’d never done it.
The next morning was a Saturday and the usual ritual is my seven-year-old watches morning cartoons while I potter around the kitchen, make the beds, check my phone, start the laundry and sort out the twins with food and clean clothes. But instead I left all that to be sorted by my husband while I took my daughter to the farmers market. At the coffee cart I reiterated the seriousness of my ‘no TV’ declaration. She took it in her stride over hot chocolate.
With the TV off, we were free to have a beautiful day together. My husband headed off to spend some time with his parents, taking one baby. I was left with the other and the three of us took the dog to the park and made moussaka from scratch. In the afternoon, we sat by the CD player and we listened to all my favourite music from when I was a teenager – ABBA, Madonna, the Beastie Boys and Nina Simone. We curled up on the couch and I started reading the first Harry Potter to her out loud. By dinner time we were up to Harry’s first match of Quidditch. There was no pleading for the TV and no tantrums at bedtime (albeit there was a little sulk when I said we needed to close the book and go to sleep).