My Two Writing Teachers colleagues and I are hosting the 13th Annual March Slice of Life Story Challenge, in which hundreds of teachers participate in posting a story per day.
Dear Kids,
When I was a kid, the TV was always on in the house where I grew up, Grandma and Grandpa’s house. There would be soccer games playing nonstop on the television in the living room, which us kids (me, and your aunt and uncle) were strictly not allowed to touch. Oprah or Donahue would always be on the tiny TV in the kitchen, and the news would be blaring from the television downstairs in the den.
I hated it. It was always so noisy. It was stressful. Television shows aren’t only noisy - they are filled with violence, competition, people yelling at each other, negative messages about body image and relationships — and commercials. So many commercials.
One night, when I was about 14 or 15 years old, I sat at the desk in the downstairs den to try to do my homework while the rest of the family watched a movie - I think the movie was Beethoven’s 2nd. (Sidenote: both of you would love the Beethoven movies, but that’s another story). The only computer in our house was at that desk and I needed to type a report, so there was nowhere else for me to go to do my work. The noise of the movie seemed to get louder and louder, the harder I tried to concentrate. I clicked away at the keyboard, but I couldn’t focus. I asked my parents to turn down the movie volume, and they did, but it didn’t make any difference for me. Finally, I started to cry out of frustration. Then, because I was a teenager and not a very good communicator, I wound up in a gigantic argument with my dad, your Grandpa. Instead of turning off the movie, he banished me from the computer. The more I argued, the more impatient with me he became. Eventually, I stomped up the stairs to my bedroom and handwrote my assignment instead of typing it.
To this day I can’t work with a TV or radio going. I hate the sound of a TV on in another room, and I can’t stand it when television is just on in the background with nobody watching it. For a long, long time I didn’t even own a television at all. In fact, your dad and I didn’t buy a television until we moved here, to our house in Vermont, when Lily was almost four years old. As you know, our TV is in the basement, and we don’t watch it much. We consider watching a show or a movie a special treat — like candy, or juice boxes.
Anyway, I wonder how the two of you will feel about screen time and television by the time you are young adults. Will you crave it and binge on it the first chance you get, like kids who aren’t allowed to have any sugar ever? Will you each run out and buy the biggest, loudest television screen you can the first chance you get? Or will it be unimportant to you since it wasn’t a huge part of your childhood?
I guess only time will tell.
Love,
Your Mom