A friend of mine recently spoke to her kindgarten class of four year olds about dinnertime and eating at the table. After a few blank looks and protesting, she discovered that the majority of them had no idea what she was talking about, as they ate with their parent(s) in front of the telly.
I was initially shocked, but thinking more about it, I realise how easy one can fall into doing that. You’re both tired, both get home after office hours, and all you want to do is relax and eat and not have to think or talk about anything much. Dinner + Telly, there you go.
Looking up the statistics on TV viewing, you realise just how many murders, violence and the likes you view over a year, or two or ten. It is shocking. Not only do you view a lot more than you realise, but you don’t really realise how desensitised you get to violence, violent crime news, etc.
A recent article I read online (found here) revealed a few of the following interesting, sad facts:
– The number of murders seen by a child by the time they finish elementary school: 8 000
– 54% of4 – 6 year olds who, when asked to choose between TV and spending time with dad, preferred TV
– 66% of Americans watch TV while eating dinner
– 200 000 acts of violence seen by age 18 on TV, including 40 000 murders
According to The Barna Group‘s research (George Barna wrote one of my favorite eye-opening books on children, called Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions, a must read!):
– a person’s lifelong behaviors and views are generally developed when they are young – particularly before they reach the teenage years
– a person’s moral foundations are generally in place by the time they reach age nine
– “In essence,” the researcher noted, “what you believe by the time you are 13 is what you will die believing.
Delving a bit deeper into this topic, I found it interesting that a friend of mine’s three year old began being suddenly defiant after watching a few episodes of a children’s TV program about rebellious sheep who defied their owner. It is amazing that a child who can hardly speak fluent sentences yet can learn powerful habits and attitudes from cartoons.
So, where do you draw the line? Are you not supposed to just get home and relax a bit in front of the telly after a long hard day? Are you supposed to pick your viewing down to what cartoons you let your child watch? That’s for you to work out and weigh up. In our house we stick to two or three educational cartoons & a few christian programs, and the rest of the stuff out there’s unknown to us 🙂
Here are a few things to consider doing, to manouvre your family in a viewing -healthy direction:
1. TOSS THE TELLY!
Personally, I know all too well how hard it is to be adamant you won’t let your baby watch TV.. until he is two and his sister came along, and then I was ever so grateful for the telly to distract him so I could just have a moment to myself. The moments turned into an hour a day, and my obliging TV-glued toddler never protested once. I understand it’s appeal. What we did when we got married (and man am I grateful for it) is we chose to not have a TV in the house. This year we’ll have been married for ten years, and still.. we do not own a TV. Not to say we don’t hire DVD’s ocassionally, but the beauty of it is we try and get into the habit of eating dinner as a family. At a table. We try to get into the habit of reading in the evenings as opposed to watching DVD’s (a hard habit to shake sometimes, but we try), of getting into hobbies, or socialising with friends. Some days I long to sit in front of the telly and just veg, but I project and think of how I would like my kids to grow up after following our example and habits, what I’d like them to value and love doing, and then we go for a walk at the dam and feed the ducks instead, or swim, even though it initially takes a lot of energy, which we don’t always feel we have.
We have friends who have a large family, and next to their television they have a few scriptures on a page, one of them being from Psalm 101:3 –
I will set before my eyes no vile thing. The deeds of faithless men I hate; they will not cling to me.” I think of this often. Love it, they challenge and remind me to keep my heart and mind pure and to protect and guard my heart. Wise words!
2. FIND A REPLACEMENT ACTIVITY
So you feel the pain of that dead time where you’re tired and just want to be entertained. Well, there are stunning alternatives to the telly out there. Considering how powerful the first ten to thirteen years are of a child’s life, it is important that we do the most we can in those years. I have discovered Discipleland. They are on our list of stuff to buy this year. They offer awesome books on the stories of the Old and New Testaments, as well as great teaching resources with leading questions that make you and your children think! Basically you get (well, for my two children’s age range) 8 Old Testament quarters and 8 New Testament quarters, each quarter has thirteen lessons, each comes with a book for teacher (mom), an activity book for the kids with stickers, etc. and a teaching poster. If we view each moment as irreplacable, as an opportunity to actively teach our kids something, this is a big thumbs up in my home. It isn’t too pricey either, and is a stunning way to teach your child the bible and the character of God. Imagine replacing mindless TV cartoons with 45minutes of this? Nice! There are many other ways to spend your time, if you are looking at replacing TV time. Dig deep and think about it, it is a valuable thing to choose to do!
3. WRITE UP A LONG TERM LIFESTYLE LIST
My husband’s big on this one, and I respect him so much for initiating this. He gets us (well, him and I at the moment until the kids are older) to write (down to weekly activities) what things we’d both like to be able to do and be, study, learn. We start off thinking of no limitations, no excuses, nothing, just imagining that the world’s our oyster 🙂 Then we write a long list of things we love doing, things we’d like to learn to do, things we’d like to study, etc. Then we write next to each if we’d like to do that activity daily, weekly or monthly, and then put it into a calendar. You’ll be surprised to find that you can fit a heck of a lot into your week, and can start even now to slowly learn/study/begin those things you feel are impossible or too expensive. Surfing in Thailand may not be an easy thing to learn to do considering I live in a landlocked city on the other side of the world, but learning Spanish is totally doable. Two hours a week is not impossible if I just learn to stop doing things that waste my time (goodbye NCIS and hello productivity!!) They say that 10 000 hours in a field makes you an expert. Those hours add up over the years pretty quickly! Don’t let life pass you by. Picture yourself in ten or twenty years, what you’d like to do and who you’d like to be, and work at it, in a planned way. Remember that bad habits also add up – although I am mildly proud in a geeky way to have watched all TEN Seasons of Stargate SG1 while pregnant with my first child, man, what a waste of time! I could be nearly fluent in Spanish by now, know what I’m saying? If I had kept on going with cheesy sci-fi where would that get me in ten or twenty years time? Most probably ten kilo’s heavier and into a SG1 fan conference. Oooh.
I hope I’ve helped you relook the value of your time, as well as the power we as parents have being examples to our children in how we choose to spend our time. I pray God would help you and I to be wise in moulding ourselves after Him, as well as our children.
Above The Daily Grind 