No TV After Midnight

The story started a few months before the end of 2021.

One day, my mom told my retired dad to watch TV if he can’t sleep at night. By night, she meant after midnight, when everyone’s asleep. My dad has this habit of sleeping during the day and being a night owl at night. Doing what? Definitely not work-related. From what I know, he surfs the net at night since he can’t sleep. We shut down the WiFi router after 12am but he has his means = mobile data.

Of course, I was very against this idea. No, you don’t! You’re not going to disrupt our sleep with the sound and blasting those non-native radiations at us. I made the no TV after midnight rule a few nights later as the TV activity after midnight continue on. For the few weeks that follow, there was tension in the air and quarrelling among us. I even had to resort to pulling out the Astro card and hiding it. Haha

The thing is, not only my dad was affected by this new no TV thing after midnight rule, my mom who’s a TV junkie and my sister were affected too. Especially my mom who loves sitting in front of the TV until well over 1am+ and she usually falls asleep in front of it. This has been going on for decades actually. Am I being unfair, then? Why put a stop to my dad’s TV watching after midnight but not my mom and sis? Oh, definitely! I only realized the unfairness towards my dad later on. But then it was my dad’s action that actually woke me up to my mom’s and sis’ TV situation. WAH!

My dad very quickly resorts to watching TV AND sleeping during the day and he’s still wide awake at night. My mom and sis needed a longer adjustment period since they’ve been doing this activity for so long. My mom and sis would say “The show is going to finish. A little bit more la.” but I put on the break and keep nagging them to shut the TV. Mom even called me bad and evil and I will counter with “Yes, I’m bad/evil but I’m also saving/protecting you (from the radiations).” or “I can’t be unfair. If I let you watch past midnight, dad would want to follow suit. And then, there are radiations from the TV” or “Let’s shut off the TV and have a good night sleep!” and so on and so forth.

A couple of months later = present day, my mom and sis are now more used to the rule. They will switch the TV off before midnight without being told and there are times when the TV is shut off by 11pm or earlier. On occasion when they do go past a little over midnight, I would say “It’s past 12pm” and off the TV goes. Most importantly, there’s no more name-calling. Thank you for co-operating dear family!

As for me, I have no problem with this as my days of watching TV after midnight are a distant memory. After unsubscribing to the Astro Sports channel a couple of years back, I stopped following football and tennis and that means no football and tennis watching and shouting like a crazy lady at the wee hours of the morning. Ahh, those were the days! Plus, there’s no need to watch Korean dramas after midnight. My transition (practically none) is the easiest among my family.

After shutting off my handphone before going to sleep from the year 2020 onwards, I noticed that I have a more satisfying sleep. And, since turning off the TV at/before midnight, my quality of sleep has further improved. Of course, other factors contributed to my improved sleep too such as resolving traumas+conflicts and better health but I believe non-native radiations play a big role too.

Here’s to more REM sleep and beautiful dreams!