Unplugged For One Week, Moran Prairie Student, Families Find Better Things To Do Than Watch Television
Jared Karstetter, a skinny 7-year-old with needle-straight hair, did something highly unusual on a recent Saturday morning - he played outside.
Jared, a student at Moran Prairie Elementary, usually gets up at 6 a.m., runs downstairs to the family room and clicks on the television to watch cartoons.
But two weeks ago, Jared’s TV viewing time plummeted to zero hours and he spent Saturday morning in the backyard playing with his father, Jerry Karstetter and his two little brothers, Curtis, 3, and Cole, 18 months.
The South Side family was one of several who joined Moran Prairie’s effort to get kids and adults to stop watching TV for six days. The school was promoting “National TV Turnoff Week, April 24-29 as did 4,000 other schools across the country.
“More than 50 percent of students participated,” said Marilyn Highberg, principal of Moran Prairie.
Highberg said the most dramatic change teachers noticed was that students were more talkative in the morning, quizzing one another about what they had done the previous night instead of watching TV.
Students were surprised at how hard it was to give up television.
Even Highberg admitted to a minor slip-up. She said she couldn’t quite resist the lure of the glowing box one evening.
“Well, I had to watch ‘NYPD Blue,”’ she said, defending her peccadillo.
Jared’s father admitted to sneaking upstairs Saturday to watch the Sonics spar with the Utah Jazz.”
“After the kids were in bed, I went upstairs and watched the game,” he said.
On weekends, Jared gets up before his parents. His TV viewing ends only when “‘we can pull him away,” his father said.
Jared repeats the routine on weekdays when he rises at 6 or 6:30 a.m. to watch reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Price is Right” for an hour to 90 minutes. Around 7:30 a.m., his mother, Perrianne, shoos him away from the television to do his chores and then scoots him off to school.
Perrianne says her son watches 10 to 16 hours of television a week.
The average child in America watches TV for about 28 hours a week, the equivalent of a part-time job, said Carl Ashley, campaign director for TV-Free America, which sponsors National TV Turnoff Week.
As a reminder of his pledge not to hit the on button, Jared taped a red ribbon across the TV set in the family room. The red crepe ribbons were provided by the school.
The family has two sets: one in the family room, and one in Jerry and Perrianne’s bedroom.
“You wonder if this week is for the kids or the adults,” Jerry Karstetter mused.
Instead of watching sports in the evening, Jerry helped his three children assemble a birdhouse and paint the post on which it would sit.
He vowed to mow the lawn, wash the car and clean out the garage - projects he’d been meaning to tackle.
“I know I’ll get it done this weekend because there won’t be anything else to do,” Jerry said.
His predictions were realized.
With the TV turned off, he accomplished all of those things, Perrianne said Monday.
The family spent evenings putting together four photo scrapbooks, something it had wanted to do for eons. Perrianne whipped up a batch of “gak,” a rubbery slime for the kids to play with.
“I think we’ll buy Jared some new books, because he’s got more time to read,” Perrianne said.
And the children spent more time outdoors playing - batting balls and playing tag and hide-and-go-seek among the trees. “I had to buy them a whiffle ball,” Perrianne said. “They were batting the ball all over the place.
Curtis, 3, wanted to put a movie in the VCR, but Perrianne had to explain to her son that even that proposal was taboo.
With no TV to look forward to in the morning, Jared began sleeping in until 7 a.m. and going to bed earlier after playing outside all evening.
“It gives me some time by myself in the morning.” Perrianne said.
The Karstetters were not the only ones to turn off the boob tube. Many of their neighbors who have children at Moran Prairie turned off for the week.
“We’re a neighborhood with silent TVs without fences,” said Jerry, referring to the sprawling yards that meld into one another. “In a little while all the kids will be out.”
Eventually neighbor Lance Griffith’s children, Katie, 7, and Colin, 7, joined the Karstetter kids outside. And when Griffith’s children weren’t running bases in the local sandlot, they were coloring with their father.
“I like to color with the kids,” Griffith said.
A couple of years ago, Griffith said, he would have the TV on all the time, “just for background.”
But he gave up that practice.
“I don’t watch much TV anymore,” he said.
His son Colin, however, suffered from withdrawal during the weeklong hiatus.
“I begged my mom to watch a little TV,” he said. “I would even have watched the weather channel. But she didn’t budge.”
“Yeah, after awhile you start craving it,” said Jerry Karstetter, agreeing with his 7-year-old neighbor.
“Well it’s been boring,” Colin said of the experience. “I played with all my toys. I can’t watch TV. I was bored.”
But the boredom would not continue forever.
The big day arrived - seven days after everyone had taken the pledge - when the Karstetter’s family room resumed its familiar glow. The windows of neighborhood homes resumed their customary sapphire flicker.
And Perrianne added another room to her busy pickup schedule.
“No one even went in the family room where the TV was (during the turnoff) so it was one less room to clean up,” she said.
And then Perrianne sighed, describing the return to TV normalcy:
“The thing I really noticed was how many times you have to repeat yourself to your children and husband.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MINUTES WITH TV ADD UP TO YEARS By Janice Podsada Staff writer Here are few TV facts compiled by TV-Free America. Remember, these are averages. According to the A.C. Nielsen Co. (1996), the average American watches more than four hours of TV each day. In a 65-year life, that person will have spent nine years glued to the tube. Percentage of Americans who regularly watch television while eating dinner: 66. Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 39. Number of hours per week that the average child watches television: 28. Percentage of 4- to 6-year-olds who, when asked to choose between watching TV and spending time with their fathers, preferred television: 54. Percentage of parents who would like to limit their children’s TV watching: 73. Chance that an American parent requires that children do their homework before watching TV: one in 12. Hours per year the average American youth spends in school: 900. Hours per year the average American youth watches television: 1,500. Percentage of Americans who can name The Three Stooges: 59. Percentage of Americans who can name at least three justices of the U.S. Supreme Court: 17.