“Tivo – Parents Use With Caution”

Last week we were visiting with my wife’s sister and her family who also have two young children. As we were sitting around talking, the conversation turned to the kids bedtime routine. We were talking about how our kids have a bedtime routine that revolves around their favorite cartoons. With us both having children under five, it was no surprise that our the routines are the same…watch Tom and Jerry kill each other from 8pm-9pm then go to bed. Then my wife mentioned that she sometimes wished the kids would go to bed a bit earlier so we could have some more time to ourselves, and of course when she mentions “time to ourselves” she is thinking about crawling into bed with a nice book, while I’m thinking about crawling into bed with her, but that is a topic for another time. Then her sister tells us that they just started to use Tivo to tape the bedtime cartoons and then play the previous night show from 7pm-8pm, one hour earlier than normal. For those of you not familiar with Tivo, it is a product that digitally records TV programs to hard disk, like a computer, and stores these programs for you to watch at your convienence. Well, when I heard how they were using modern technology to manipulate their son’s mind and trick him into going to bed earlier, I thought, “Wow, what an awesome idea”. I mean I was so excited. It was like he just gave me tomorrow night’s lotto numbers. …Ok, let me stop here for one second and say this: “For those of you reading this who think it’s just terrible how we parents can’t wait to put our children down for the night”, call me when you have two young kids at home running wild because you obviously currently do not.

So over the course of the next few days I began the process of recording. The plan was to record each night’s show and play it the next night a bit earlier each time until we arrived at a bedtime that worked better for my wife and I……. And let me tell you it was AWSOME. We got to watch more of our shows for a change and even occasionally had some “time to ourselves”. It worked like a charm. It worked so well because the cartoon-before-bed routine had been in place for a while now that it was like Pavlov’s dog. It was as if the kids were programmed to go directly to bed after their show. Everything was going great for the next few weeks until last Saturday. It began like any other day, but ended with what some might call, “A Self Intervention”. What happened you ask?.. Well, after watching the cartoons and putting the kids to bed my wife walks into the kitchen, looks at me and says, “What do you want to do?”…I paused for a moment, glanced at the kitchen window and replied, “ I’m going to go mow the lawn”, and she said, “Good, I’m going jogging.” It was only 3pm......That’s when we knew we had gone to far!