Tic Toc

Beth doesn't know how to tell time. They taught it to her in school and we tried to reinforce it at home, but she just never 'got it'.

She can't tell time, but she loves the clock! Beth likes knowing when to leave, when to eat, when to bathe. We have a few analog clocks around the house but most of them are digital. And it's the digital clocks that Beth understands. Well, 'understand' might be too strong of a word. She reads the numbers and that helps.

I write her notes each day to tell her when her bus will pick her up. We tell her what time she needs to be upstairs so we can go shopping. She wants to know what time we'll be home from work, and what time dinner will be ready.

For many years, Beth would eat lunch at 2:30. Every day. Didn't matter if we had all gone out to a restaurant at noon, on the drive home she would announce, "It's 2:30!" We'd tell her that she just had lunch and she'd respond with, "Oh."

I haven't figured this one out yet but some nights we'll all be playing board games and she'll begin to announce the time, "It's 8:45. It's 8:52. It's 9:04." Okay Beth, is something going to happen? Why are you telling us the time? "I dunno." She just loves the clock.

For this reason, I don't know why it took me so long to figure out I should use the clock when it comes to her TV.

Maybe it's just me, but as the night wears on, I feel the TV should get quieter. Everything else winds down at the end of the day, so the TV should as well. But Beth just gets louder. Not only is her TV blaring, but she's yelling and screaming and laughing and whooping, she's really loud!

For years, I've told her to turn her TV down. Night after night. For years. Literally.

Chuck and I lay in bed at 11:30 at night, tossing and turning, trying to sleep over all the noise. (It doesn't help that her living room is directly below our bedroom!) Then I'm out of bed and headed down the stairs, "Please turn your TV down."

She reluctantly picks up her remote and slowly turns it down. Back upstairs I go.

But recently I got the idea to have her turn her TV down at certain times of the night. I checked her TV one evening to see how loud it was and I think the volume level was 50. Then I asked her if she would turn it down to 45 at 9:30. She said okay!

Then I asked her if at 10:00, she would turn it down to 42.

And to quote Elliot from ET, "It's working!"

Why did it take me so long to figure this out? :)