TV Tune Out Week
How To Celebrate This Holiday?
There is a holiday, unique to the North Shore. The holiday is
a week of solemnity and sacred devotion to the greater good of
our children. Think Mardi Gras but without the beads, parades
and overindulgence. This holiday is called TV Tuneout Week. 
Click
here to see the video
In the course of the week, celebrants turn off the television and look about in wonderment. What are we going to do? What are the kids going to do? How long before we are bored? Whoops, we already are!
The holiday is sponsored by the Winnetka Alliance for Early Childhood, a loose amalgam of developmental educators and administrators. And the point is not so much to chide parents for letting their children watch so much television, but to show alternatives. There’s a whole world of activity and fun outside of the box in the living room.
Originally confined to Winnetka, it’s known all along the lake shore and into the western suburbs. The holiday began with children being given “TV Tuneout Week” buttons to affix to their shirts. These buttons entitled them to, say, a free piece of candy at Lakeside Foods or a set of stickers at Village Toy Shop.
In the early years, TV Tuneout required discipline that was sorely tested. Did rented movies count? What if your little Horatio can’t go to sleep if he’s not watching Land Before Time? And do professional sports count?—unenlightened husbands would sometimes grumble about how TV Tuneout nearly always overlapped March Madness. And pretty soon, a domestic squabble arises in the kitchen over whether TV Tuneout is a wonderful opportunity to explore the nature of our dependence on television or whether it’s a bunch of Know It Alls trying to control every aspect of our lives.
This year’s TV Tuneout Week was so fun I wished I was in third grade again. All week, free chocolates at The Chocolate Box, toys at Northfield’s Children’s Gift Shop, decorating my own Eiffel Tower at the French Institute in Winnetka, free swimming at the Glenview Park District’s Splash Landing, and the Winnetka Village Toy Shops’ Lego exposition, featuring Lego masterpieces in the window and the opportunity to win a prize.
I went to the Winnetka branch for duct tape fun, limited to children
in 3rd through 8th grade. Once I persuaded them that I had been
held back in eighth grade a mortifying 34 times, I got to make
duct tape flip-flops. What fun! And when they showed me the corset
dress made from gray duct tape, I immediately ripped up my Bloomingdale’s
credit card. To be fair, I should have done that months before
since they get so very testy about not paying. Click
here to see the video – How to solve every fashion challenge with
duct tape!
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