For two nights in a row now, after NikkiZ goes to bed, I hang out in LilZ’s room and wrap presents while watching Season 2 of Veronica Mars. I had turned his room into Santa’s Workshop since he wasn’t going to be home until Friday. Since I picked him up early, but I still have a billion presents to wrap for our Christmas on Saturday, I’m still working in half of his room. He has already seen the entire season of VM and gets anxious every night for me to watch it. He wants me to be, “…finished already! It’s sooooooo good,” as I’ve heard a million times in the last 48 hours. I love VM, so I have no doubt he’s right, but I also can’t stay up all night watching the DVD. I think my boss might be a little miffed if I called in to work the next day with a TV hangover.

However - this is one of those examples of why I don’t think TV is evil. LilZ is getting old enough now that we don’t have a whole lot in common anymore. He likes scary horror flicks and I still like the cheesy family comedies. He tolerates a lot more pop music than I do (although Money Maker is my all-time favorite running song), and he still doesn’t get into the same books I do as an adult. Although he does read the ones I read when I was his age. TV, on the other hand, is still something we can bond over. We sit around watching the DVDs together and pausing periodically to discuss something. Maybe some character reminds LilZ of a jackass at his school. Maybe we scoff over how unrealistic their million-dollar school dances are. We’ll talk about it during the day, he’ll ask me what I think is going to happen. Or, we’ll have inside jokes built around certain parts of the show.

I know we probably watch too much TV as a whole. But - I only watch my shows after the kids are asleep. When LilZ is awake, we watch our shows. Like How I Met Your Mother, or The Class, or The Soup…shows we both love and get excited about. It gives us common ground and something to get excited about together. TV creates a gateway of conversation for us…and when you’re parenting a tween and you need to establish a good repor for future talks (or current talks) about sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll…conversation starters are priceless.

And…we loooove TV.