No TV

Like I said, my children are watching a lot less TV than they used to.
We never watched all that much lately. At least I am trying to tell myself that.
We were never background tv people. Those are the ones who have the TV on constantly to provide some background noise. Sort of like a radio. We at least never did that.
During his first 18 months, my son didn't watch TV at all. But then my daughter was born. (They are 20 months apart.) And I was just totally overworked with two small children. That's when I turned on the TV, just to have some time to do some basic household chores. I think I was always trying to limit their TV time, but there also have been days when they watched for two, three hours. (I like to think that it was not too often.)
Now, I can't really defend that. I just can say that in spite of playgroups etc, you still don't have the support you would have if you live close to (a lot of devoted) family members.
A long time during my upbringing, I grew up living on the same property (but not in the same house) like my grandparents. My father had three siblings, so aunts, uncles and cousins were constantly around. They all lived in the same small town. (That's Europe for you.) There was a real neighborhood. People in my town have known each other for generations. And since it was an agricultural area, a lot of the daily work went on outside, so there was always someone around, when we as children played outside. I don't think anybody could have snatched us away.
Anyway, since a lot of people just don't have those resources, the TV has to play babysitter sometimes.
But a week ago, I decided that I didn't want to let them watch TV anymore, at least not their usual hour a day.
In the beginning, it was rough. But now they seem to have gotten used to it. While they do monopolize quite a bit more of my time, they also play together more.