The Courage to Say No by J.M. Holland

My wife told me recently of a friend of hers, a great mom, who complained about her kids playing video games. Her two boys have been playing their Nintendo DS and Wii all day, every day, all summer. She said she couldn't take it away from them because they scream and cry and say she is a terrible mother and she doesn't love them. Her boys are 5 and 7 years old.

My heart broke hearing this. I can feel you cringing, too.

My wife's first thought was, "If you didn't let them have a DS, then you wouldn't have to take it away." I agree, but this is not the hard part. Our family has worked diligently to limit all types of media for our kids, even TV. I recently read about some research into kids and media written by Lisa Guernsey who really seems to understand the complexity of the problem of media and your little baby. She asks the hard questions in her book, Into the Minds of Babes, and in her recent article for Newsweek, Sesame Street: The Show that Counts. Lisa describes how some media, including the one that started all, Sesame Street, can actually positively affect learning. It makes understanding the choices we make about our kids and media more rainbow and less black and white.

Our kids actually watch less TV now than they did when they were younger. My son doesn't like to watch a show for more than about an hour. This didn't happen over night. We had to say no. A lot. It was hard, but not the way you might think. It took courage to say no and suffer the consequences of screaming and crying. It takes courage to say no when all your friends let their kids have a (Wii, Playstation, DS... fill in the blank). It is not a monumental courage, but rather it is a daily decision by decsion type of courage that many parents don't have. It's difficult because you know it will make your kid happy, at least for a little while, but what we don't see when we give a kid digital entertainment that can walk around with them is that their little brains can't handle more than one reality at a time, and the digital one is much more exciting. That is, unless they really get interested in the world around them.

My favorite response to the question, "Can we watch TV?" is, "No, but you can go outside."

Getting kids to give up the digital world for the beautiful world also takes more than courage. It takes time. Like the failed drug campaign, "Just say no," saying no doesn't work that way in the real world. We have to say, "No, lets do something else fun. How about painting, building a fairy house, making a potion in the garden?" "What if we go for a walk, cut the grass with scissors, build a tower out of pretzels." Once you get them involved, they will take over and teach you things about gardens, fairies, or pretzels you never knew before. It takes courage to say no, but it als takes courage to face the never ending expanse of your child's imagination and go there, without fear, stepping joyfully off the edge of adulthood and allowing them to take you across the universe.

Image by Mark A. Hicks: http://newyorkkids.timeout.com/articles/features/70656/how-to-say-no-to-kids

Comments

[Rebecca D. Ungerer]

Thank you for posting this short piece. So many times, I have caught myself saying, "Turn off the tv and do something else," and then not offering some suggestions of what that 'something' is or worse not getting up and getting them started on another activity.

Limiting technology doesn't seem to be an issue with my younger child--it's the pre-teens and older kids. It takes great effort to be an active parent and, yes, that means tearing yourself away from your own technology addictions(just as with teens, for many adults it's social networks)and getting outside with your kids.