Lose the Tube, Boob

TV and its connection to the tendency toward violence has been in the news lately. Here is an article I wrote a long time ago about how I learned about responsible TV viewing.

      My three-year-old daughter and I kept a pretty strict schedule. After seeing everyone off, we cleaned up the kitchen, dressed, and straightened up the bedrooms. My daughter then watched Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. Since she did not nap, this was her downtime. These were the only shows she was allowed to watch. I did the usual house chores and sometimes sat with her and watched -- I do love Fred.

Soon it was playtime. We played games and read until noon. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch until 1:00. Then my child retired to her bedroom for an hour of toddler play and I cleaned up the kitchen and did paperwork. I also watched my one and only soap opera.

My grandmother had been watching this particular soap for twenty years and we had all fallen into the pattern of watching it too.  I thought it was harmless, until one day, my daughter and I got off schedule.

           
For some reason, we were late getting to lunch one afternoon. We sat down at 1:00.  I wanted to keep up with the soap, so I brought a TV into the kitchen and switched it on. My daughter chewed her sandwich and looked thoughtfully at the screen as the soap hunks and divas did their thing. Suddenly, she sat up straight and pointed. 

          “Mommy,” she shouted. “There’s that bad boy Tad!”

I was shocked. She not only knew the character’s name but also that he had a pretty rotten reputation.  How?  I wondered. She had never been in the room when I watched. I took one look at her, and one look at the screen, and turned it off – for good.

Children today spend a lot of time staring at screens. You know the statistics.  We’ve heard how many murders, violent acts, and sexual situations children are exposed to each week. Thousands of advertisements bombard them with each cartoon. But just how are our children influenced by what they see?

Experts have many opinions. Some say TV has no effect on children. Others argue, “It does too.” Who are these experts? Which children are they studying? Yours? Mine? They never asked me, but I’d bet any of them that I am the chief expert in studying my own children.

I noticed early on that my boys, who watched Saturday morning cartoons, wanted many of the toys they saw advertised. I made it a habit to sit with them and question each commercial. Did that toy really fly? How fast did those cars really go? Before long, they were pretty good at judging toys and understood how few lived up to their promises.

By the time my daughter came along I had wised up. Poor deprived child only watched educational TV and very little of that. She never even saw a commercial. Yet even she knew what happened on the soap. My watching affected her. 

How else does screen time affect our kids? One of my friends had a little one who could not fall asleep before the wee hours of the morning. This poor kid went to kindergarten exhausted every morning, but every evening, he was raring to go. After trying everything, the weary parents asked their wise pediatrician. His prescription surprised them all: no food after 6:00 and no TV after 5:00 – for anybody! Whoa! The whole family had to give up TV. How would they fill their evening? It was rough, but the kid was worth it, so they quit. Within three weeks, peace reigned. The little sweetheart fell asleep by 8:00. Mom and Dad rediscovered conversation and board games. They got more sleep too and felt great.

 Why did the doctor nix the tube? His theory, corroborated by later brain studies, was that the flickering screen stimulated the child’s brain not allowing him to calm down for many hours after it was turned off. Our eyes don’t perceive this flicker, but our brains do.

Small children have a hard time discriminating between fantasy and reality. I have had many arguments with little ones who were sure that something they saw on TV was real. One even argued that dead people could get up and live again because he saw one do it on TV. “He was really dead too!”

So what if someone gets shot? She’ll turn up good as new on the next episode. Problems always get solved in no more than an hour. Children whose parents mistreat them or get divorced are sure to reform before the last commercial. Police, parents, and teachers are just a bunch of jerks keeping kids from having any real fun. Ask any TV teen.

Does TV violence affect children? There were six kids in my family. I asked my brother recently if he ever remembers us all running around the house bopping each other and screaming.  “Of course not,” he replied.  “Mom and Dad would never have put up with that.” Yet kids see this all the time on TV.

Mr. Rogers once got an award.  During his acceptance speech, he appealed to the television industry to be more responsible in programming. He related the story of a thirteen-year-old boy who had kidnapped and killed an eight-year-old. When asked why, the youth replied that he had seen it on TV and thought it looked like something new to do.

I didn’t wait for the TV industry to become more responsible.  I turned off that soap and never turned it on again. It wasn’t easy, but my child was worth it.

Why don’t you give your family a screen break? Turn off the TV. Limit computer use. Teach your kids to watch responsibly. Lose the boob tube and save a great kid – yours.