Finding our imagination

Recently while sitting in the waiting room at the Dr.'s office, I found myself reading an article in a parenting magazine about the affect TV watching has on children. I will admit, my children watched way too much TV in my opinion. I always made sure the shows were educational, but in the long run, TV is TV. The article said that children who watch more than 3 hours of TV a day are a 1/3 less creative/imaginitive than children who watch no TV at all. Now, I have no idea how accurate that statistic is, but it got me thinking...So I conducted a little experiment of my own. I took TV away from my kids. They get to watch about an hour to an hour and a half of TV a day. Surprisingly, Austin took to it immediately. He started to play more by himself...inventing little guns out of blocks, chasing monsters, pretending he's a cat... etc.  He also started to take a liking to Little People. I LOVE Little People. Since before Austin and Lucas had any sort of care for them, I have been stockpiling them from the thrift store. I don't think I have ever purchased one single Little People from the store. I buy all their houses, cars, garages etc at the thrift store.  The boys have been obsessed with them. It's so cute to watch Austin act out our life. He has a mommy, daddy and Lukie Little people along with a Jamie (our babysitter and my friend), a Joey (austin's little friend from Calera) and our neighbor, Mrs. Melanie.  It hasn't been a huge adjustment for them. I just don't turn the TV on. They don't fuss about it and they find something ELSE to do with their time. It also has given me more time to get MY stuff done around the house...it's a win win for us.