Franny’s birthday went well and the little dollhouse was received happily. I did a lot of debating with myself about whether or not to give her the little television that came with the set. We don’t have one at our house and while I miss it sometimes, I’m glad that Strudel isn’t going to be exposed to it all of the time. I tried to limit television when Franny was little, and we suffered through rabbit ears, which naturally cuts down the amount of TV you watch anyway. But I ended up getting cable as a coping technique during the death throes of my marriage, and I have to admit that it was nicer having a drunken lout on the couch next to me if “Trading Spaces” was on.
Now, surprisingly, Franny watches a lot of TV when she’s not with me. When I picked her up from school yesterday she was telling me she was watching a show with That Poor Woman where some guy’s face was being eaten off by a disease. I think little kids will have nightmares no matter what, but I have to think this isn’t helping. Perhaps That Poor Woman will rethink her approach to children and media when she spawns this spring.
Sometimes I think what I do is pointless. I try to get her to eat healthy food, and monitor the media she’s exposed to, but does it matter when she’s with me only half the time? She has small morning chores and evening chores here, and seems surprised every time she comes back because I expect her to flush the toilet and wipe her butt (I am so unreasonable). I don’t even want to speculate why it is not habit for her to do so already. It takes her about a day to adjust and fall back into place here, after which she seems pretty happy and stops with the “Well, my dad lets me have gum” talk.
“I’m thinking about leaving the TV out of this set when I give it to Franny,” I told my sister on Friday, when we were fooling with the dollhouse.
“Why?” she asked me.
I had to really think about it, because it was more of a gut feeling than anything else. I’m glad she asked me that, because it’s caused me to really think about what I’m trying to do for the girls. I have really come to value life without television. In the short amounts of time I let Franny watch PBS as a toddler, she was already becoming an agent for the advertisers, which was freaky and irritating. In the end I decided to leave out the big screen TV that came with the dollhouse. It lurks on the fridge because I haven’t gotten rid of it yet.
Franny, however, thought her dollhouse was incomplete. I had just put the pants back on one of her little people (their feet are huge) and she took him away to put back into the house.
“He’s going to watch television while I eat breakfast,” she said over her shoulder.
“But they don’t have a TV,” I said.
“I’m pretending the birthday card that Evan gave me is a TV,” she replied.
“They could read a book,” I said, pointedly.
“Yes, they do sometimes,” she said.
I thought about just giving her the TV then…about giving in to what she really wants. I know, intellectually, that I cannot control every aspect of her life or how she turns out. I can’t stop her from pretending there’s a TV in the house, but at least I can give her a toy that reflects our values and the way we live.
So she was *pretending* that a birthday card was a TV? OK, granted she thinks of a family watching TV as a pretty standard activity. But she imagined up a TV to make the story she was telling with her little people work. It seems to me she’s doing pretty well if the wheels in her little skull are spinning well enough to turn a card into a television. It probably doesn’t make it any less frustrating for you, but she sounds pretty together.
I think it rocks that she’s getting the “best of both worlds” – as much as it pains me to say it. She’s learning from you that there are other ways to entertain herself beyond TV, but she’s also aware that not everyone thinks that TV is a “bad thing”.
TV in general, not so great. But when one is lying captive on the couch, being regularly beaten by the disease that’s taken over the body, there is nothing finer than reruns of The Nanny. Or perhaps I am not distinguishing my points very well.
This is a good post. It’s cool that you care about Franny and Strudel’s minds and character. Not all parents do.
wow, that’s a great decision not having tv in your house. i am trying to talk myself into not having cable once we move and keeping it that way. so hard :( no more malcolm in the middle reruns, no more simpsons, no more horribly funny local news.
don’t become disheartened, i went back and forth (every week) between my parents for over 10 years and their two homes couldn’t be more different, but as i grew up i treated the two lifestyles as two options, one did not outweigh the other, and in the end i adopted some of mom’s good stuff and some of dad’s good stuff as well. and some of their bullshit … but that can’t be helped…
I’m cheering for you to win in the battle with cheap plastic crap. At some big Montessori lecture, all that shit got refered to as “false gods.” As in, don’t let your children fall into the firey pit, save them from the false gods.
I had the same dilemma when Ayla got a dollhouse. I also opted out of the included TV, although she was much younger, and didn’t seem to miss it. I think it’s good that Franny knows that NOT everyone watches TV, and that life can be good and whole without it. That she was using her imagination and creativity to turn a card into the TV is beautiful.
As always, you rule. GO SJ!!!!
very well layered, this.
(we have a television but no reception; only use it to watch DVDs.)
sheesh. I recently took Sam up to visit my dad and his little cousin Sammy was watching TV nonstop-Sam glazed over instantly, sucked in with all the sticky power of a black hole.
Every single commercial brought Sammy’s eager ‘mama can buy me that!’ comment out to harry her single dad.
Gah. It made me super glad we don’t watch TV at home.
It is really hard balancing a kid’s life when they’re back and forth between two sets of house rules and styles of discipline(or lack of it)every week.
It’s frustrating the heck outta me lately.
People say kids are adaptable and that they can handle different rules…
I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Snerk–I just noticed your tagline. As you know, that never gets old.
I’m glad F. likes her dollhouse!
As the product of parents who tired very hard to keep TV out of my life when I was small. (Because that was the hippie child-rearing fashion trend of the moment. Later they didn’t care at all.) I can tell you that it made me crave and adore TV even more than I probably would have, had they not made such a big control-freak deal about it. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to “sneak” TV watching in while they slept. I also watched a TON of unsupervised TV at my friend’s houses. I would have been much better off with parents who watched TV with me and taught me how to watch TV critically. Sadly, I had to learn that skill on my own, as an adult.
The harder my parents tried to “control” something; the more they merely created an issue around control and formed rather than avoided their children’s tendencies. My brother today is a complete pop-culture TV addict and I hate reading books. It’s not because I can’t or don’t want to read (I do) but because every time I pick up a book, I hear my self-righteous parents nagging me about reading a book and how “superior” that is to anything else… and then I put the book down.