In Year 6, She found TV and it was good

In addition to ranting, venting and general outlay of personal philosophies, I am now going to add guilt assuagement to my blog repertoire. (Don't look "assuagement" up; it is not a real word but I firmly believe it should be.)
So, that little voice in my head (i.e. my mom) recently told me that I should stop limiting "screen time" so severely with my kids. Over the Christmas vacation, I decided to give it a whirl. At first, I would hang out near them watching Dora or TUFF Puppy, asking thoughtful questions about the characters' motivations. Occasionally, I would throw in the Spanish word equivalent to try to add a bilingual aspect to Arthur. After the less than enthusiastic reaction to my discussion questions, I would slink off to the quiet kitchen to make dinner, feeling horribly guilty about the tv watching going on.
This went on for the first week or so. Then, all of a sudden, in my guilt ridden state, I realized I had actually gotten through making turkey meatballs without washing my hands fifty million times to remove something from someone's mouth or stop someone from poking someone else with a chopstick. It was really nice; I'll be honest with you. I started thinking this tv thing might have some real perks.
On Saturday of the first week, I turned on Penguins of Madagascar for my oldest son while the younger ones napped. I decided to workout in the room he was watching to see what kind of horrible debauchery was going on in the show. You know what I found out? That cartoon is freaking hilarious. I rarely laugh out loud during movies, and I think I laughed three times in the half hour segment. It was seriously funny. There is a ring tailed lemur character with an Indian accent who could do stand up on the Comedy Channel. I couldn't believe it. The show I had put on to entertain my 6 year old was actually entertaining me!
Needless to say, I learned a few things during my sojourn into tv land. I'm not saying we're going to have a screen time free for all in the house from now on, but I will say that I like an hour of peace and quiet in my day and that there is inherent value in laughter. And, if I'm having a rough day, I might just sit down with my kids and laugh next to them at the silliness on the screen. Thanks Mom.