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For Jackie Pitel, a teacher at Irving Pertzsch Elementary, observing Turn Off the TV Week has never been a personal hardship. She’s never been big on television. But she thought it might be a tough adjustment when she first asked her students to observe the week eight years ago, so she just asked them to turn off the TV for one hour each night.

“We were afraid we would get nobody participating,” she said.

The next year, she asked the students to do without TV for two hours a night. That wasn’t as hard as they thought it might be, so these days Pitel asks her students to turn off the TV at least Monday through Thursday of Turn Off the TV week, which this week is April 21-27.

Of course, Pitel gives her students plenty of motivation to participate. “I do admit I do put bells and whistles over the top of it,” she said.

Tuesday through Friday of Turn Off the TV week, Pitel has students bring in signed slips from their parents saying the kids had not watched any TV the previous night. Those who bring in the slips are entered in a drawing for prizes, which range from a book or free time in library to lunch out with Pitel.

“Some days I pull out every kid’s name and give them something,” she said.

Of course, Pitel isn’t the only one encouraging participation in Turn Off the TV Week. Organizations across the country encourage kids and adults to get away from any reliance on screens for amusement during the week, including computers and portable video game devices.

In this area, the Coulee Region Childhood Obesity Coalition is again encouraging people to turn off the TV, and like Pitel, the organization is offering incentives.

People who log onto the Coulee Region Childhood Obesity Web site at www.childhoodobesitycoalition.org can download forms for family members to log what they did during the week instead of watching TV or playing on the computer.

People who return completed logs to Linda Lee at the La Crosse County Health Department by May 5 will be eligible for Turn Off the TV Week Challenge prizes.

For some kids, though, turning off the TV will bring its own rewards, Pitel said.

“They realize, ‘Oh, my God, I got some attention from Mom. We were a family instead of a bunch of robots,’” Pitel said.

The family interaction is a refreshing change from what happens when the TV is on, Pitel said. “The focus is never totally on each other as much as what is coming out of that box,” she said.

During Turn Off the TV Week, Pitel said, “I think we tune into our family and the people who are around us. We realize how much of our world is noise, just noise we don’t need.”

TV BY THE NUMBERS

The Childhood Obesity Coalition cites the following statistics from the Center for Screen-Time Awareness and the Kaiser Family Foundation in arguing for observance of Turn Off the TV Week (and a reduction in screen time throughout the year):

American children view 20,000 commercials each year.

The average child spends more time in front of the TV (1,023 hours) than in school (900 hours).

Rather than talk with one another, 40 percent of families frequently or always watch TV during dinner.

For every hour of TV each day a child watches, their risk of developing attention-related problems later increases by 10 percent. For example, if a child watches three hours of TV each day, that child is 30 percent more likely to develop attention deficit disorder. (Pediatrics, 2004)

By the time they turn 70, the average American has spent between seven to 10 years watching TV.

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