Of Cats and Kids

Made-up holidays, vol. 1:

Posted by: Carol Lombardi

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 12:31 PM

Today is the first day of the much-ignored "Turn off TV week." Visit the web site for a full range of guilt-inducing research and statistics or visit the Adbusters page for more of an activist point of view.

Interesting concept, but my 7-year-old and I really don't watch much TV. I'm not organized or responsible enough to have a written protocol; I just don't turn it on and neither does she.

She actually watched more TV when she was little (not a lot, but more) and I was so disturbed by the impact that I gradually weaned her off of it for the most part.

My kid is normally a highly energetic, chatty, personable, curious child. Two seconds after the TV goes on she morphs into a slack-jawed, non-responsive drooling zombie, whether she's watching a quality PBS kids show or an infomercial for toilet plungers. It's just creepy.

Getting back to the statistics, I'm assuming that anyone capable of reading this already knows that too much TV is bad for kids on multiple levels. It would be the right thing for me at this point to pose the rhetorical question, "Do you WANT your child to be an uncommunicative couch potato?"

And I would hope that someone, somewhere, besides me, would honestly answer, "yes, actually, sometimes I do."

This blog points out that it is probably more expensive and definitely more time-consuming not to watch TV, because you have to occupy your kids with something else.

Children drooling in front of a TV need only a towel to wipe off their chins. A child engaged in her environment is by default a menace to said environment. My child has "gardened" perennial plants that cost more than a month of cable, and routinely creates messes that take much much longer to clean up than popping in another DVD would have.

But when I see her reading because she loves it, or leaning all the way back on the swing to look at the clouds, or running to visit with a neighbor and the neighbor's dogs, I really think it's worth it. When I see pages of her attempts to sketch our cats, or find 100 random pictures on my digital camera or see her playing piano in dress-up clothes complete with butterfly wings and a boa, I know it's worth it.

TV will always be there; her childhood won't.

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