Why I Set Rigid Limits for My Children, Especially with TV

Throughout my children's childhoods and adolescence we've enjoyed simple pleasures, like walking through the nature trails or along the river on a Saturday morning, or just riding bikes. Many an evening we sit out on our patio reading rather than going inside to watch television or play video games. Like my parents before me, I sensed trouble from too much contact with video stimulation for my children. I remember the days when they were maybe 8, 5 and 2 and I would hear a chorus of "I want that" during the commercials while they watched Nickelodeon as I cleaned house. At the time I got rid of cable to cut costs, and without cable they had to manage with public TV and regular broadcast. It cut back on the droning responses to commercial stimuli. But, I also watched programs with them, and we really did spend more of our time watching movies than actual programming. I felt there was a broader universe even of entertainment that they should be exposed to than just what was on TV at this moment. And we had no video games or hand held devices until my youngest was 8, no unsupervised internet access until very recently.

My two teenage daughters ask me relentlessly to let them have MySpace pages, but I am adamant that they have enough social networking as it is. They both have cell phones, with limited text messaging allowed. They see their friends every day at school and they talk to them at night on their phones. They go to football games, dances. They spend the night at friends' houses and we regularly have groups of their friends overnight at our house. They have email accounts on our computer, so they also get emails from friends they don't see as much. What possible benefit could MySpace offer them at this age? They could post pictures of themselves. They could write stupid things they might regret later. They could get roped into the cyberbullying so many of their friends have been victimized by. Or, like my very sheltered niece, whose world exploded when she turned 18 and she got her MySpace page, middle aged men could come track them down at work after pretending to be teenagers they chatted with and eventually made 'friends' out of online. She'd participated in so many chain emails giving up bits and pieces of very personal information about herself that these creeps tracked her down. Thank goodness she lives in a small town and her very large father picked her up from work.

My younger daughter has a close friend whose parents limit her socializing to her youth group at her Church. They don't allow her to go to dances or social events and she cannot talk to people on the phone in their home except while they supervise her. They monitor her emails and her cell phone log. Still, she networks with people online who have told her her parents are crazy, she needs to rebel. She has an older boyfriend who goes to her youth group. He also interacts with her online. He is equally as controlling as her parents. He keeps her away from other peers. Thanks to her MySpace pals she has learned ways to get out without her parents' knowledge, and her older boyfriend is slowly manipulating her into a sexual relationship. I have asked my daughter to please tell this girl she needs to talk openly and honestly to her parents. This is a 14 year old child who has little life experience or exposure, who faces unreasonable limits at home. I think her parents aren't strict so much as unreasonable and foolish, but the conflicting messages she gets from them verus her online pals is creating a dangerous mix.

My own children have enough peer inclufence from all the other many avenues they have to communicate with their peers absent parental overisight. They do not need MySpace. If they want it when they go off to college they can have it, but we've discussed it enough and they understand the downsides enough that when they are a little older and on their own I am hopeful they will know how to manage it best.

The other major influence that seems such a challenge to overcome is the sort of lifestyles and messages coming at my kids not just on cable and regular TV programs, but worst of all through all the reality TV shows. I hated "The Bachelor" when it came out and when my two oldest started watching it during the third or 4th season because all their friends at school had told them about it, I suffered through watching it too. There was a woman trying to narrow a field of men. It was so blatantly promiscuous I found it very offensive. No one should date more than one person at a time, especially when there is a physical relationship (which clearly existed in this program as the numbers dwindled down and the woman spent more individual time with her 'suitors'). And you shouldn't rush relationships. This premise had the person racing through dates with men openly competing for her affections, to get to the point where she would bring THREE of them home to meet her family (after overnight stays in hotels). It's not surprising to me that out of all the seasons of this show only one couple actually married. It is surprising to me that one couple actually did marry. Of course, they had a huge, expensive, televised wedding. Hopefully now their life together is a little less public and less splashy and phony. I nixed the Bachelor. It has no redeeming qualities. It teaches children nothing but voyeurism and to concentrate on physical attributes and physical attraction much too soon in a relationship. And it tacitly supports infidelity in dating relationships.

Paris and Nicole were just a no from the get go. I watched a couple of painful episodes where they pretend to be so completely unintelligent and out of touch with humanity that it defies logic, and even as they pretend to be so empty and shallow they managed to mock all the 'normal' people with 'real lives' they are alongside. The premise here is you really don't want a real life and hard work is for suckers - and stupid is good in women. Now I have to monitor "The Girls Next Door", a totally unacceptable program for anyone under 18. My daughters thought nothing of watching 81 year old Hugh Hefner cavort with his three nubile girlfriends in the mansion. In their innocence (okay, and opennness) they were charmed by three young women who make their living's posing nude for the gratification of anonymous males, and who live in the mansion of an aging man-child. My son even spied an episode or two, for obvious reasons. That is the lifestyle Hugh Hefner has chosen. It is the lifestyle those young women have chosen. They seem like perfectly normal everyday people in the show, though they frequently don't have their clothes on and work hard to make nude photo shoots the boss will be proud of. Fine for them. Not fine for my 11, 14 and 17 year old kids. But, it's not as bad as "Keeping up with the Kardashians" about a nobody two rungs below the self promoting Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian. She has no talent, no profession. She made a home made sex tape to get her name 'out there'. She lives a life of excess and self-promotion. She shops, parties, has sex with people. Why is that on television? Why is "the Hills" on TV? If I block everything other than 'acceptable for all audiences' on my TVs, we can't watch good programming. It gets thrown out with the worthless. So, I have to just say no reality TV (other than "Little People Big World" and "John and Kate Plus 8"). And I enforce it. When my middle daughter complains that Kimora Lee Simmons doesn't have sex on her reality show, I have to point out that her lifestyle isn't a real one and the show focuses on her prima donna ways. It just doesn't offer anything of value. She's a nice enough person, but I don't need to know what she does with her every waking minute and how she treats her personal staff.

Why isn't there a reality show about UN relief camps? Lifestyles of Unjustly Displaced. Lifestyles of the Left Behind and Forgotten. Lifestyles of the Barely Breathing but Full of Hope. I don't need my children to know what every celebrity's crib looks like, how much ink they all have, and who's sleeping with who. I don't need someone to show me the everyday life of a playboy bunny. It just doesn't have value. I'm not saying their lives don't have value - but they have nothing to teach my children. My kids learned more from our hard times and the reality we shared what we had even then, than they ever learned from a limo trip to a hot restaurant with their gal pals. I want them to appreciate the luxury of the nicely appointed home we own and the reliable, fuel efficent cars of recent vintage that we drive rather than have them lust after a bigger house, flashier cars. I want them to value their friends for whose those people are, not who they know or who they'd slept with or what parties they've attended. I want my children to value faith, love, honor, fidelity, charity, etc. I can't recall anyone going to church on those reality shows, or rolling up their sleeves to help others. Except the Roloffs. Their house is always open to their kids' friends. They struggle like all parents struggle with making their kids be responsible. They pray. They seem to live a warm, loving lifestyle and to be very caring people. When they almost lost their youngest in a freak accident, they brought the good friend who'd been injured with him into their home until he was well enough to be on his own again. They cry, they fight, they make mistakes, they do the right thing. I love it that one day my middle daughter commented to me that she always knew little people, like Matt, Amy and Zack Roloff, could do everything we could, but she just didn't know all the barriers they face, every day, and she had no idea about all the health issues they faced. It is a gift to have a mirror into a family much like yours, but with different challenges. John and Kate with their twins and their sextuplets try to stay ahead of the chaos and close to each other. They find themselves in a situation they couldn't have anticipated or really assessed, but they love their way through it. There is not a lot of glamour in their lives, and sometimes even the simplest things are incredibly complicated for them because of how many small children they have to factor into the situation. If we're going to watch people in their everyday lives, I'd rather watch people whose experiences are indeed every day, and who cope with them in ways that make us all feel less alone in our mundane struggles and in our commitment to love our families well.

I really strongly disagree with those commercials where the parent talks to the movie or series character and says "I'm going to have to block you". It isn't just that simple. Don't turn the shows on at all. Do we really need that subhuman zombie guy tearing up bodies with his chainsaw? Does that really need to be in our living rooms? Do we need to know what party what drugged out, oversexed wannabe celebrity went to this weekend? I don't think so. If you are about those things and enjoy those things, fine for you. But just clicking a block button on a cable box or a TV remote doesn't prevent the programming for coming and coming. If it's not blocked and we don't watch it, if we take that stand as parents, then eventually the programming will stop getting made as frequently. It's the same with all the internet access we have. Yes, I think a porn filter is an essential given the nature of the internet, but we also need to use other sites, other avenues. We owe it to our children to be proactive and very involved in what they are exposed to in a constructive manner. We have to stand up to "everyone else is on that site" or "Everyone else is watching it". I ask my children why they feel they need to see something. Why should they give up 30 minutes of a day to watch Kimora Lee flounce about her house or see the bunnies go to a Renaissance Faire. We could work on decorating our home, or cleaning it. We could go to a renaissance faire on our own to see what they're like. Or we could just do something we actually know we want to do, or should be doing. Instead of pressing our noses up against the glass to watch the lives of others, we should be actively living our lives.

I may be out of touch and too strict, but my children are growing up thoughtful, loving, responsible. They are having fun and enjoying their own life experiences too. My oldest went to France with her French Club last year. They've all been to Europe, traveled extensively. They go to camp. They are building their own experiences and world views, but as they do that I am minding the gates, the limits. My kids benefit from my life experience and I am learning much from theirs. But, at this stage I am clearly the parent and they are clearly the children. And I wish our society wasn't at such a low that I had to daily battle all of these unsavory and unhelpful influences. But, battle them I will. I can't in good conscience pretend to value any of the things MySpace offers my kids that they couldn't get better and more safely elsewhere. Again, for adults it is fine. And I can't pretend there is any edifying reason to have all of this reality TV bombarding my children with bad influences about how to treat others, or to be so self important. Life in not a contrived game like "Survivor" or "Big Brother", nor is it a social experiment like "Wife Swap", and it sure as heck isn't a 24 hour floating party. It is something much more than that and I owe it to my children to emphasize that reality by curbing these influences.