Like my friend said, you surf the net, but the TV is blaring nonsense at the back. When I go to restaurants, I observed that those who go out on a date or go out with a bunch of friends, if the restaurant has TV (which all restaurants now have apparently), their view would at one time or another focus on the TV. Weird but that's what's happening at the moment. TV = life.
For me, TV has always been my companion since childhood. I don't have brothers and sisters to play with so the TV kept me company. This is lie as I have 3 brothers and 1 sister. And this para is just a waste of space.
Moving on...
Back when I was in school, be it primary or secondary, TV have always been the focal point in my life. It goes; wake up in the morning, turn on the TV. Arrive home from school, TV is on, so I'd casually sit or lie down in front of it. Go out in the evening for some healthy activity, play football and what not whilst discussing shows that we liked or disliked (depending on the level of gayness*) and then as I reach home with sweats still dripping off my forehead and mud stuck between the nails, I would turn on the TV for a warm-down. That's life back then.
*gayness = everything in this world can relate back to your degree of gayness (personal opinion)
In University, not so much TV. Not that I didn't want to watch it, but, I just can't. But then downloading TV shows and movies became common, thankfully, and therefore TV watching became possible via computer (1 point for the computer geeks ~clap clap~).
Now that I'm working, TV is just a night activity to water down the effects of work. But then I realised, by me watching TV whenever I'm with my child (i.e. everytime I got home from work) I'm giving my child no choice but to watch TV.
Sure there are other activities which I still do with my child like reading books, go to the playground, sing and dance with her but for majority of the time, the TV would be on. Is this something I want her to be comfortable with? To have the TV on all the time? Is this good for her? That's when an article in The Sun came along and sure enough, research shows TV can't be good for a child, especially ones who are below the age of 2 years.
Read this article last week, came home from work and decided, okay no more TV for Sofeah (at least not on weekdays). See, when we let Sofeah watch TV, it is because initially we wanted to distract her while me and the wife can run errands and do some house chores. So in a way we force her to watch TV to ease our own burden. This is understandable, of course, because we are 3 people in a house and we need to do things for ourselves and for the house without having our daughter in the way.
But is that a good reason to let her watch TV? Initially we thought, of course it is. But now that I've brought sense and logic into the argument...not really.
After making the decision to halt TV watching things got a little bit hard on Sofeah. She can't take it. For 2 days she acted a little bit like a brat (sorry to say but quite unpleasant), kicking and screaming wanting to watch the TV. We stuck by our decision and did other activities with her to try to distract her away from the TV. Of course her focus would eventually veer towards the television and at which point she would cry. But we remained steadfast (I wanted to turn on the TV so badly).
That happened for 2 days straight. It did not help that she was recovering from a fever as well when we made the decision.
But on the third day, everything was calmer. She was ready to try other activities. Reading books to her became easier and she explores the world around her more. She starts playing with everything around her and try out different things as well (which can only be good). Even at restaurants and other places she's now behaving better and listens to us more. She's not as aggressive.
The way I see it, the less TV watching, the more we can interact with her. The more activities we do with her hands on. She gets to explore new things more rather than sitting quietly in front of the TV with eyes fixated on colorful objects and not really understanding what's going on. TV might well be good for her one day but now is probably not the time.
I know full well that in some cases we can't avoid letting our kids or ourselves watch TV. There are a lot to learn from watching TV shows (discovery channels, informative TV shows, educational cartoon series) but these are all things which I think we can gather from the world around us. Why the need to let some cartoon animals and purple dinosaurs teach our children to read and write or be good and be nice? Can't we teach them the same?
Similarly for us adults. I feel that sometimes we're missing out on the good things in life by submitting ourselves to moving images on the magic box. Friendly chatters at our favourite hangouts are taken over by status updating on facebooks and twitters. Book reading are substituted by TV watching.
I myself haven't read a book for quite awhile. Need to change that. [abrupt end to this entry]
4 comments:
Quoting you:
"Why the need to let some cartoon animals and purple dinosaurs teach our children to [...] be good and be nice? Can't we teach them the same?"
Sometimes with children, lessons and moral stories stick better coming from another source i.e. bedtime storybooks, cartoons. Maybe because they relate better with the characters.
True fact, although our kids love us, sometimes they don't take us that seriously. :D
Regards to Farid and Sofeah.
Haha yeah know about that. But sad fact though for society if we let cartoon characters become the bedrock of our children's education instead parents.
Of course parents can still make learning interesting if we try right?
How are things? Haven't even had time to read blogs :p
Salam to Faris and Matt!!
It's sad, true. But I suppose that is the downside of technology.
But, also, there are other ways to educate children other than tv. I found this blog that has a baking course for children. That's one way of learning kan?!
Things are alright with us, Alhamdulillah. Haven't been updating the blog pun.
Take care. Happy Birthday.
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