Tuesday, August 08, 2017

7th August - the day I disconnected the Internet access to the PlayRoom TV

The boys have their own playroom - it is a Dining Room, but we don't entertain much, so it was pointless having a lovely dining room all set up, and toys EVERYWHERE else in the house.



SO, last year, after watching Tarzan OR The Jungle Book on DVD 1578936million times on the TV in the lounge (aka parents space), we put a TV up in the playroom, connected to a DVD player - and 24 hours later the TV blew up.

Right, so, bought a new TV, which enabled us to link to our WiFi in the house - ooooooooooo, awesome!  Promptly linked to Google Movies, and Netflix - DONE - kids can watch lovely movies that I control on the remote.
Sadly, smartypants kids, figured out how to use the remote (I didn't teach them, I wanted C.O.N.T.R.O.L forever) - and found out how to pick other Netflix kids things.

THEY.  WERE. OFTEN. RUBBISH - Baby Shark, doo, doo, doo, dadoo, doo, lalalala 

but sometimes were interesting - Dinosaurs and Animals, and learning stuff ............. and then

They figured out the YouTube channel!
(I have been on many many Sony TV Boards trying to find out how to remove all options except what I want to no avail)
It became a ONLY after dinner - you can watch it, and I set up the parental control settings, so should be safer - it was and it wasn't.  YouTube Kids channel is not an "app" on the TV, and controlling madly, I kept erasing all history, etc so they could not watch again and again, and be linked across to other things accidentally.

To be honest, I left it longer than I should have - as having them watch TV sometimes just gave me some space to make dinner, do washing, hide in the cupboard, do a marathon (ahahahah) without actually having to do anything but shout, ask them to share, and stop fighting.
It was easy to allow them to watch things, and they did learn things like :

"Did you know that manta rays and stingrays are different?  Manta rays don't have stingers" (Abel)

plus lots of other cool things .............

The TV - controlled and changed one of the boys.  It was all he wanted to do, he would cry about the remote, about not watching it, about turning it off, and his personality became HORRID ..... the other, didn't really care either way, but decided to also complain and carry on about the Remote and him having it "zero" times in the past 30 seconds ........

So, on Monday morning, unable to sleep, at 4am, I went into the playroom and turned off the WiFi setting - when the boys woke up, we told them it was broken, and only DVD's work now......... and waited for the tantrum ............ nothing ............ just said "Oh", and found a DVD to watch whilst eating breakfast before Kinder.  Off they went, and I sat back and went "huh" ........

Of course I realised during the course of the day they now cannot watch Brave Wilderness - with Coyote Peterson - which they liked and learnt things from, or The Lion Whisperer
 - but also Google Movies - which had all the NEW movies on it - like Moana, Sing, Trolls ...... which they watched at least once a week.
I went out, and bought the DVD's just in case


The boys came home from Kinder, and instead of "mummy quiet time", we now have "Mum, can we paint / draw / play SNAP / do puzzles / play matching games / go out to Daddy's office and play computer (MUmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm the computer isn't working) .......... but no complaints about the TV.

Win Lose?

They are however, playing so nicely and not fighting, but doings things together and apart .... perhaps that is just Day 1?




Dinner at Mum last night, and they lay together on the floor and watched a show before we headed back home.



Today is Day 2, let's see how we go?