Part 7 - TV (Beautiful reminders from Mitten Strings from God)
I have been wanting to re-share some posts from the days when I was a young mother - gems I had extracted from one of my wow-books*.
I am re-posting the series of 11 parts here, specially for the young mothers around me. May your journey of motherhood be as beautiful and as enjoyable as the Lord intended it to be for us!
[*Wow-books are those that have shaped my life in some ways, and they occupy a special place in my heart and on my bookshelf, treasured.]
t's been four years since my husband and I agreed that, instead of arguing with our kid about how much TV they were allowed to watch, we would simply turn the TV off together. Since that time, we have rented an occasional video, and the boys have watched the odd TV show at Grandma's house or in the homes of relatives and friends. But by and large, TV is simply not a part of our lives.
Our lives are a series of choices. The world we live in is a world of our own making, the sum of all our collective choices. Yet so many parents feel powerless to make good choices, sensing that the pull of the media is stronger than they are. How many children are being raised by the media, TV characters telling them what to buy, how to dress, what to eat, how to talk, what to aspire to , what to love, and what to scorn.
How is it that in a society in which most of us feel starved for time, we are willing to hand over the time we do have to our TV sets?
I must admit that the first step in this journey - giving up the TV - was hard at first. I especially hated losing the sacred viewing hour between 5-6pm, the hour when my tired, cranky children were happy to flop down in front of the TV while their tired mother got dinner made. Jack was two at that time, the age at which if he was not watching TV, then I had to be watching him. So those first TV free months did present a challenge. It was easy for me and my husband to give up TV ourselves; it was much harder to give up TV as a free and always available baby-sitter for the kids. At the beginning, I had to put a lot of enery into getting us all through the day. I finally solved the pre-dinner problem by putting Henry, then five, to work and putting Jack into the kichen sink. We found our way. Henry would set the table, he would peel the vegetables, slice a banana, drop walnuts into a salad. And Jack was delighted to take his clothes off, and sit in a sink full of warm bubbly water, "washing dishes". It still required more of me, but I got something back too - happy times with my children.
Jack graduated from in-sink dishwasher to chief napkin folder. By the time he was five, he knew how to handle a sharp knife and could be entrusted with a pile of potoatoes to peel and chop. As they got older, they made placemats, wrote out menus, set the table. Our dinnertime collaboration meant that both boys grew up knowing a good deal about what goes itno a meal and how things are done in the kitcheh.
In our house, eliminating TV clered a space for the things we really care about. We felt more connected to each other and more in touch wtih ourselves. We've found that no TV means more time for music, more time for reading, more time for art, more time for play, more compassion, more time for each other, more time to live.
Once we see our homes as sancturies from a hectic world, then TV begins to feel more and more like an unsavoury intruder, robbing our homes of life and meaning, stealing our time, and preying on our souls.
When the TV goes off, life begins.
Comments
Post a Comment