Until about 2 months ago, Peter has not been a fan of TV; rarely anything would grab his attention for longer than 30 seconds (with the exception of Olympic diving). Generally he would ignore the TV completely and I was happy with that...until recently. Peter is becoming increasingly curious and clingy, meaning I cannot do ANYTHING without him being right there with me. While I love my son and appreciate his "help" when cleaning, I really wanted just 20 minutes a day to myself to do fun things like wash dishes or scrub the kitchen floor (I lead a very exciting life).
At the end of February I started Cartoon Campaign 2009. My idea was that if I could get Peter to watch 1 episode of some cartoon in the morning I could have that blissful freedom for at least a short while. So I started poking around the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon for possible candidates. After weighing the pros and cons of the various shows (ie. animation style, colors, characters, age appropriateness, music, storylines, level of annoyingness, etc.) I narrowed it down to 2 shows: Handy Manny on Disney and The Backyardigans on Nickelodeon (yes, I overthink things!). So everyday after breakfast I would sit with Peter on my lap and watch one of those shows. At first we would only watch a few minutes slowly increasing the time daily. Soon Peter showed a definite preference for Handy Manny and would watch an entire episode with me (each episode is composed of two 12 minute segments). Then for a week I sat next to him as Peter watched Hanny Manny, eventually working my way farther from him each day. After about a month of this conditioning, Peter finally would watch 24 minutes of TV everyday by himself. SUCCESS!
Unfortunately, my plan was a little too successful. Now Peter is absolutely obsessed with Handy Manny. He has turned the sign for "more" into the Handy Manny sign. Now all day I rebuff his desperate attempts to watch the show all day (I'm convinced he would watch 3 hours straight if I let him). And of course I exacerbated the problem by buying Peter a Handy Manny toolset. My plan has completely backfired on me; I think I would rather give away my 24 minutes of me time each day to not have to listen and watch Peter beg all day for his beloved Handy Manny. I guess this is what I get for trying to control my son.
Peter watching Handy Manny with his toolbox.
