Gadget To Ration TV Time!

susiestar

Roll With It
My mom introduced me to American Scientific and Surplus and it is AWESOME! They have a great catalog and a great website.

I just found a gadget that you hook up to the tv and it won't turn on unless the person has a special coin (they give you the coins). You set certain times of day when it will accept the coins and then each coin gets 30 min of tv time. I know it won't handle every difficult child, but some of our difficult children might not be able to hack it.

Just thought some of us might find it handy, esp at just $10. Take a look around the site - too cool!!! My mom gave me a little book with a ton of post-its in it. Big ones on one side, medication and then 5 rows of flag sized postits on the other and that is where she got them.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
I've run into a couple great ways to ration TV...
1) don't have one. makes it REAL easy.

2) some engineer-dad hooked up the TV to a battery system, and hooked up the battery system to a stationary bike. bike charges battery. every hour on the bike produced about 30 mins of TV time. caveat: he had ONE kid, so no fighting that way - and the kid was super-sedentary... his point wasn't so much to limit TV but to increase exercise...
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
IC...the warden of the Maricopa County Jail has done that to his tent city inmates. I dont think I would want to do anything to my kids that is associated with jail, especially some kids.
 

skeeter

New Member
I had mine plugged into a power strip, mounted on the back of a cabinet, too high for them to reach or see (this is when they were small). When they would try to turn the TV on, I'd just say "the cable must be out again" (we had a lot of trouble with the cable in those early years). Went real well until the day son asked what that little orange light was on the back of the cabinet!
 
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