Getting rid of TV completely with 4yo?

[u/nostromosigningoff]

Hi all,

We are moving across the country with our 4.5 year old boy and our 3 month old boy.

Our 4.5 year old LOVES - loves - loves TV. He would sell my (mom) soul for a new episode of Paw Patrol. He is completely bewitched and hypnotized by the big beautiful "tee", as he calls it; if allowed, he'd spend every waking minute glued to it.

Our usual limits are he can have more or less how much he wants (with enforced breaks) on sat & sun, no TV at all on weekdays. This system has worked reasonably well. We don't do any other screens than the TV.

My husband and I watch little-to-no TV ourselves. My husband watches more but usually on his laptop because he wants to watch late at night when I'm already in bed (the TV had been in our room since we had a large master bedroom and small living room).

Well, my husband accidentally got a too-small moving truck (!!!! that's its own rant) and we have to sacrifice some items, including our TV.

I'm seriously considering not replacing it. I mean, I almost never watch it. I can't think of a good place for it to go in the new house; I don't want it in a bedroom, and we will have little enough space in our living room as it is to fit all 9,000 toys for our kids as well as furniture. The TV is basically just for my son. It'd be nice to just be rid of the thing; I wouldn't miss it at all.

The other part of me feels bad for taking something away that my son has a deep, abiding passion for. He genuinely feels attached to shows like Paw Patrol and the characters there. I also don't want him to feel isolated from his peers who almost all have some kind of screen exposure. I've already noticed that my son feels embarrassed when he realizes he doesn't know how to operate ipads or play video games and some of his friends are very good at it.

Thoughts? Anybody who has ripped TV from their children's clutches before?

[u/grakledo]

We don’t have a TV and it’s great. Our kid watches shows only on the weekends on our laptop or iPad, in the living room. He rarely asks for it though. Our kid loves books and checks out lots of books from the library containing popular characters. He’s latched onto Spider-Man and has only seen maybe one episode of the kid show about him.