How as a Christian parent can we compete with Elmo, and Blues Clues? I mean, we have Veggie Tales, but often I don't see Veggie Tales telling the story of Jesus either. It is just so disturbing to me that my kids know Elmo better than Jesus. I figure if my 21mo old knows her alphabet, how to count, shapes, and songs to all kinds of tunes including Elmo's World, she can learn the toddler christian action songs! I mean come on people...the alphabet song has as many phonetic syllables as the "B I B L E" song!

I *think* my daughters know who Blue and Elmo are, but they've never seen them on TV as far as I know. We very rarely have the TV on. When they were preschoolers, TV was for sick days only, and then it was usually pre-recorded. It's terribly difficult to break with the TV. Either you're a work-outside-the-home mother, in which case the day-home or before-and-after-school care probably uses at least some TV; or you're a stay-at-home mother, in which case the TV may be your life-line for preserving a sense of connectedness with the outside world and for snatching those few private moments so you can go to the bathroom alone. But, hard though it is, I'd recommend you turn it off.

Start by refusing to compete with it. You wouldn't tolerate your children's rudely interrupting you -- why tolerate it from a machine? When you pick up that story-book to sit down with your little ones, turn it off then. If you can, have it set up in a cupboard or entertainment centre where you can close its doors and make it invisible. Don't turn it on again unless someone asks, and then turn it off the instant the current show is over.

Make sure you have high-play-value toys, and make sure they are visible and accessible to your children. If your only play-room is also your living room, sacrifice some of its formal look to accommodate toy-shelves. Include dress-up clothes that can be used to act out bible stories, and dolls or action figures that can be used in the same way. Let them throw a table-cloth over a card-table to be the tabernacle, or Abraham's tent. Have a set of play farm animals, to be Moses' wife's flock, or the pigs that the prodigal son fed, or Pharoahs horses. You may have to spend some time modelling this kind of play for the children but, especially if you can *leave* the TV off, they will soon learn to play by themselves.

Read, read, read. Forget about videos: there are few if any really good ones; and they all have the flaw that they are essentially non-interactive. But there are lots of beautifully-illustrated books. Rural though you are, you have internet and that means you have Amazon.com. Read, look at the pictures, and then use them as a jumping-off point for imaginative play. Then once the play is going well, extricate yourself so you can go do whatever you would have done while the TV was on.

Rearrange your living arrangement so the play-area is adjacent to your work-area. Then you can supervise while the children go about their active play: you don't need to rely on the TV to "keep them occupied" while you make dinner or pay the bills. And sing as you go about your work. Don't drive yourself crazy: my children never learned Christian children's action songs. They learned Sarum plain-chant and nineteenth century camp-meeting songs. They had as much fun with "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand" (sung while jumping from stone to stone in my rock garden -- oh, my poor perennials<g>) as ever they've had with "Seven Sons had Father Abraham"). And Trisagion is as easy as the B I B L E song, and more tolerable when the hundredth iteration comes around. If you don't sing, do it any way. God loves cheerful praise; he doesn't care if it's off-key. If you still can't bring yourself to sing, order some tapes and play them -- the ones *you* like. A three-year-old lisping through Keith Green's "Make my life a prayer to You" is just as charming as a three-year-old lisping through "Jesus Loves Me".

My children were born before the one-year maternity benefit came into effect, so by the time they were 10 mo.s old I was back at work. I was hungry for time with them by the end of each day. But I was also tired, hungry, and stressed; as were they, and the TV seemed awfully alluring at 5:00, offering the prospect of just a half hour of mindlessness to adjust personas -- a half hour which if I gave in would inevitably stretch out to all evening. I'm pretty bad at playing, too.

But one thing I have just discovered that I wish I had discovered when the girls were much younger is Matchbox cars. They even make these plasticized fabric mats printed with roadways that you can drive along. And if you spend a half hour in the matchbox/Hot Wheels aisle of the toy store you start to see details that make certain cars special. I was amazed at the range of detail and realism. It's probably the only way I'll ever own a purple Lamberghini! It's not too hard to lie on your tummy on the floor and push cars around while you daydream -- and DS can lie beside you and push his cars around, and you don't even have to talk, you can just listen to him..

I also wish Flylady had been around ten years ago, or that I had been born naturally organized: arranging toys prettily on shelves where they can be easily found to play with, instead of piled into rubbermaid bins, makes playing seem a lot more fun. And clearing off two shelves of books to make room for a two-story Barbie house on the cleared shelves was good, too. If I have to play, I can amuse myself by rearranging the furniture while the girls lead the dolls through their more complex activities. Maybe you can find some toys *you* like to play with!

If you surround them with it, they will learn it. Just cut out the competition.

My children are 7 and 10 now. They get about an hour of TV a week, often less, occasionally more.