Television Wars

Like many women, I thought I knew everything about raising kids before I actually had them. I promised myself that I’d never let my kids do anything that could harm them, including watching too much TV. Then I had my son, and I realized the only way I would get a shower in would be to strap him into his swing and plop him in front of a 27 minute Baby Einstein video.

Despite my need for personal hygiene, I was somewhat able to manage the amount of television my son watched for quite a few years. We purposefully didn’t have a TV in our main living space, so it was easier to redirect both my children as necessary. But as my son got older, he started asking for more TV time, mostly because his friends at school would talk about certain shows. He wanted to join in; I acquiesced.

And somewhere along the line it got out of control.

Suddenly, I found myself having battles about TV time versus homework and practicing his musical instrument. I yelled. I cajoled. I threatened. Nothing would work – it became a constant daily battle between how much TV time my son could squeeze into an already very packed day of school, homework, and activities.

It was like he was addicted to these shows. And, frankly, I really didn’t like some of them, thinking the dialogue (and dress code!) was inappropriate for kids under the age of, well, 30.

Then, two weeks ago, we were in the kitchen together, and I asked him a question. He didn’t answer, so I asked again. My normally calm and mild-mannered nine-year old answered me back using a tone and an attitude that was becoming more frequent, and followed up his tirade with an dramatic eye-roll and a “whatevs.” I (not so calmly) asked him where he learned to speak like that, especially to his mother. Before I let him answer (I was on my own tirade), I sort of figured it out for myself: he was acting like the characters on those pre-teen/teen TV shows that are pretending to be “family-friendly” on the surface but are actually disguising a snarky, sarcastic attitude that is supposed to be funny underneath.

It occurred to me that my son couldn’t distinguish between the insolent “humor” on these shows and how you are supposed to speak in reality. I had a few moments of insecurity, where I blamed myself for not doing a good enough job of instilling better manners and values in him, and for not better restricting TV time or the type of shows he watched.

After my pity party, though, I decided that the shows had to go. If they were a stronger influence on him than I was, they were history.

The same day I made that decision, a friend of mine posted a comment on Facebook about the lack of decent family sitcoms currently on TV. Unbeknownst to her, she had further validated my decision. It wasn’t my imagination. And maybe my son had to be older to appreciate that it was inappropriate to model the impertinent behaviors on the shows he was watching.

When I lowered the boom, my son was furious. He was so angry with me – for days – and had every intention of making me suffer. I gave him 30 minutes of TV time a day, potentially more on the weekends, and the shows had to be vetted by me or his dad prior to watching. Sounds rough, I know.

I told my son that I didn’t need him to agree with (or even like) me; he just had to abide by my decision. And I explained that as he got older, if he could manage to watch these so-called family-friendly shows in moderation, and not model the disrespectful tone of its characters, we could revisit the type of shows he could watch.

I’m not quite sure how this will all pan out, although I can report that once I severely limited the amount of TV he could watch each day, the battles ended. He took more time with his homework, and was playing with his sister more. He had nothing to rush towards, as the TV lay dark and silent.

There is, at least, a fragile peace now. I understand it was a cold-turkey, major behavior change, but the situation needed to be addressed.

As for the types of shows being offered to tweens and pre-teens on those alleged family-friendly networks, my personal experience has been less than favorable. Maybe I’m too prudish for how teens are supposed to dress and act in 2013. Maybe my son is incredibly impressionable. Maybe he’s immature, too. I’m not sure. But I do know that as angry as he’s been at me for taking his TV time and favorite shows away, his tone has pretty much gone back to his normal self, and I haven’t heard a sarcastic “whatevs” in days.

I’ve won part of the battle, but most likely not the war. For now, I’ll take it.

* This article originally appeared on The Mommy Vortex.