TUNING IN TO THE MIDDLE WAY
If you wish to know the truth, then hold to no opinions for or against anything.
—Seng-t’san, “Verses on the Faith-Mind”
TV or not TV? Oh, yes, the question of the day. The question of every day.
There are easy ways to answer it. One is, don’t own a TV. The second is, if your TV breaks, don’t replace it. The third is, give away a TV if it comes into your possession. For the rest of us, the issue is as precarious as a two-wheeler without training wheels. It’s all in the balance.
Most of us lean emphatically one way at first. Absolutely not, no way, no sir, no TV before age three at the earliest! Our infants are sleeping for the greater part of this period of moral certainty. And then there comes the day when your child wakes up; the phone rings; the sink backs up; the microwave catches on fire; you are starving, thirsty, stinky, done in, dead tired; your conviction is tested, and you totter.
Any or none of these things has to happen for you to find yourself doing what I did. One day, when my husband was ensconced in the sanctuary of his morning shower, I decided to take charge of my wormlike existence. Today, I said to myself, I will bathe before 9:00 P.M. I will dress for the day. In fact, I will do it right now, by putting her right here, in the safety of her beloved bouncer chair, attended by the engaging and educational stimulation of Barney!
When I emerged, clean and steamy from my moment’s bliss, my husband stood before me gaping in disbelief and condemnation. It was an indefensible sight. The bouncer chair was eerily still. Georgia, a babbler, was stone silent. Barney was warbling and she was in the zone. I rushed to her, to her dilated pupils and puddling drool. I saw it then: this is a bad thing. This is a very bad thing.
What did we do? Nothing. We didn’t give away our TV. When it broke, we replaced it. Still, we’d seen into the mouth of the hulking purple monster, and we kept a safer distance. The videos given for her first birthday inspired our terror. Harmless kiddie songs and furry puppets—that’s what you think! We kept them under lock and key. Thank you so much for your gift of baby’s first small-caliber weapons.
Time and circumstance work on these situations like a river on a rock. The hard edges wear away. You soften up. It’s a good thing, too. Our daughter wasn’t living in an ideologically pristine world. The door was not barred. The air was unpurified. This wasn’t a case study and we weren’t lab rats. She was living in our world, in our house, with a thirty-six-inch Sony in the living room. By making this choice, or rather, by making no choice, we put ourselves on a more difficult path than prohibition. We had chosen Zen’s middle way, the path free of discriminating views. (Translation: We still watch Survivor.)
We are exercising moderation, and that takes a lot of exercise. It requires much more effort and diligence, much more involvement and attention than either extreme. It’s so easy to be lazy about how much TV your child sees, but that creates addiction. It’s also easy to be rigidly prohibitive, but that creates craving. It’s much easier to hold an opinion either way than to hold a remote control, take responsibility for pushing “on” and “off,” and fess up to the consequences.
Opinions are funny things. Most parents agree that TV is a dulling, exploitative, and mildly wicked influence on our children. Most parents agree that a plasma screen provides superb picture quality and crisp sound with low distortion from almost any angle. See? Opinions can conflict, provoke, confuse, and contradict each other—and these are just the opinions that you hold yourself. Opinions are fine for the purpose of discussion or the sport of debate, but they don’t work in the real world. You are what works in the real world.
Depending on the time and the conditions, TV can be a lifesaver or a life taker. Many a time TV has saved my child when her intemperate mom was ready to bite or bolt or both. Many a time I have let ten minutes of the tube ooze on languorously until my daughter’s entire being evaporated into vacuity. You must be present to discern when one situation transforms into the other. You must be present if you wish to know the truth. You simply must be present.
All of the same can be said for the multitude of media diversions that now infiltrate our lives and occupy every corner of our homes. Be watchful that you do not install a TV in your child’s room. Be watchful that you do not take pride in her precocious ability to load a VCR or activate the DVD player. Be watchful that you do not grant an exemption from all of this watchfulness to time your child spends at the computer, which you will. The latest technology always seems to trump commonsense precautions and invite ridiculous double standards. Even without the home theater system our husbands want for Christmas, our houses are already temples of electronic stimulation. We as parents must be the temple guards.
Be forewarned: there’s nothing moderate about moderation. It takes a lot of practice. Moderation demands that you never ever fool yourself, but you will keep trying to nonetheless. Researchers say it is difficult to accurately assess the impact of TV on children because parents lie about how much their children watch. Your misrepresentations may not be bald-faced, it’s just hard to acknowledge the truth. Do the math on how many hours a week your child sits in front of a screen and you’ll be convinced that you added wrong. How can two hours a day add up to fourteen hours a week? My husband and I are forever spinning the most positive damage assessment. She’s singing along! It teaches the alphabet! It’s interactive! She can use the mouse! She loves it! Excellent hand-eye coordination! She’s dancing! She’s so smart!
Accept the following as facts: the TV is a surrogate, a surrogate for you and all the things that you aren’t presently available to give. TV is resting time; a better place for a child to rest is in a bed. No Einsteins have yet emerged from a childhood under the tutelage of videos, no matter what it says on the package. Children learn from TV, yes, but nearly everything they learn will be too much and too soon. Anything useful that they learn from TV can be taught by you if you will muster the same cleverness and consistency. When you can’t, you are the one who turns on the TV, and you are the one who must turn it off. When it is on, ideally you are too. Right at hand, reading the invisible warning rolling like a closed caption across the screen your child is glued to. Wake up! We are holding your children hostage. If you ever want to see them alive again, turn this off!
The next time you park your kid in front of the TV, set a timer, knowing the timer is for you. When the timer goes off, step forward and speak. Whatever you say should start with “let’s.” Let’s play. Let’s go to the park. Let’s read. Let’s go outside. Let’s cook. Let’s blow bubbles. Let’s chase. Let’s tickle. Let’s paint. Let’s pick flowers. You can stand on the sidelines bloviating all day about how bad TV is and it won’t make a bit of difference. You must animate and activate the life you share.
All that being said, it can be truly eye-opening to watch TV with your child. It will affirm, each time, the primacy of your role in your child’s life. And it will demonstrate, over and over, that you cannot impose a standard for your child that is any different from the way you, as an adult, live. In that way, you begin to see that the sticky business of discipline begins with yourself.