A New Kind of Seen and Not Heard

I don't believe in children being seen and not heard. I believe children are a vital part of the family and should be included in conversations all throughout the day. The idea that children show respect through silence may be a thing of the past, but we have a whole new kind of seen and not heard today. We rid ourselves of our children through any avenue we can, as early as we can. Day care, preschool, grade school, extracurriculars, and so on. And
when we DO have them, we set them in front of the TV.

I just saw a news story about a grocery store offering carts for children with a built in TV screen to play cartoons. I remember grocery shopping with my mom as a child. We would pick recipes ahead of time and choose out the ingredients together. It was a time to visit with mom, learn to compare prices, and help plan meals for the week. It was a time to count out my own money that I had saved to buy something special. I was included in the experience and I'm sure it was early training for what my mom hoped to be good shopping habits later. It was actually a special time spent with my mom. But somehow parents today think a TV screen is the answer for entertaining their children during grocery shopping trips.

How sad. But I shouldn't be surprised. Road trips used to be times of looking for license plates from different states, playing I Spy, noticing the beauty of the surroundings, and conversing. Now every mini van has a screen to entertain the kids and keep them quiet. And to top that, some have two or three screens. Because we all know it would be the end of the world if little Johnny had to share a TV with his sister.

Meal times used to be times to pray together, enjoy a meal, and catch up with one another. Now families entertain themselves at the dinner table with the news, a cartoon, or a movie. TV is even used for "educational purposes" which, to throw my opinion out there, seems to be used as just one more reason to place kids in front of a screen instead of involving them in life and educating them through experiences.

What it boils down to is that we like to get kids out of the way. We check "have kid number 1" and "have kid number 2" off our life list, then we spend their childhood doing everything in our power to make sure they don't inconvenience us. Send them away, let someone else raise them, ignore them, distract them with the TV. It's so much easier to plop the crying child in the cart to watch Sponge Bob than it is to actually discipline. It's easier to let Sesame Street do the teaching than to sit down and teach a child to count. And it's easier to let Yo Gabba Gabba (yikes!) put your child to bed than it is to read him a story and rock him to sleep. So now we have a bunch of kids who are dependent on a screen to get them through the day. They can't eat breakfast without it, they can't go on a trip without it, they can't go to sleep without it, and NOW they can't sit in the shopping cart without it.

Instead of teaching our kids to be seen and not heard for the purpose of respect, we are now teaching them to be seen and not heard because it's easier than having to deal with them ourselves. What's next? Changing tables with built-in TV screens? Sand box sets that include a wide screen and speakers? Swing set cartoon stations?

Children deserve better. I hope we won't buy into TV parenting. I hope we'll take pleasure in the everyday tasks that come along with raising children. Children are eternal beings and life is too short to waste theirs in front of TV screens.