If they say it on the Internet/Radio/Television...

Modern TV family

...it must be true!

Are you familiar with that ad?  I believe it is for State Farm insurance.  The gentleman is mapping his accident on his cell phone when a women walks up.  She is all about how they can't post any lies on the Internet.  Then she says her date, who is a French model, is coming who she met on the Internet.  He is far from a model and, from the look on his face, you can tell he lied to her.

Why am I bringing this up?  These media sources (radio, Internet, television) are ways we learn about how to deal with things and how products come into our homes.  Last night, on the way home from work, I heard a radio ad aimed at parents of unfocused children.  The advertised product was a game, a video game, that your child was able to play and learn to focus and learn overall.  They were giving away demos.  Not only did just this idea make me sad but at the very end of the ad was a startling statement.  It was not in the wording of a typical disclaimer.  Instead of "May not be effective for all children," it said, "Your child may not be successful."

How powerful.  Parents only want the best for their children, only want their children to succeed.  Otherwise, why would they buy such a product.  But the power in the statement that takes the blame of effectiveness off the product and places it on the child.  Therefore, if your child does not improve or succeed, it is the fault of the child, not the product.

The other component that blows my mind in this advertisement is the idea that a child can gain these skills all through a video game.  But then again, we are a generation that let's our televisions babysit for us.  Whenever we have my fiance's son over, I am amazed at how much his life revolves around the TV.  We try to turn it off for him to settle down for the night, only to be met with cries that a certain show was about to come on or should be coming on.  He has asked us if he can fall asleep on the sofa, watching TV.  When he is watching it, he is in a trance.

I will admit that when I watch TV, I sometimes tune the rest of the world out.  My escape.  It shouldn't be.  My art should be my escape, my music should be my escape, as should my relationship and my family and friends.  Unfortunately, by the time I get home some nights, there isn't time.  For example, all this week, I do not get home until after 9:30 every night.  Once home, it's time for me to finish everything else that needs to be done around the house, for myself and the meal.

Life gets crazy and hectic.  But that is never reason enough to set aside the relationships between people in order to hush a room with a movie or TV.  And these things will not help our children, our youth get better in school.  When I heard the radio commercial, I immediately tried to reflect back on how I was taught to focus.  I wasn't taught with TV, video games or Internet.  Those were things I was privileged to if I earned them.  Otherwise, I knew to pay attention, to listen, to do well in school.  I knew how to play by myself and with my sisters.

Perhaps with having television babysitting our children, it causes inattentiveness.  We try to talk to the youth while they are lost in another world.  It could be teaching them that it is OK to ignore an adult.  If we don't like something on TV or on the radio, we just change the channel.  At school, there is no channel to change.  If a student gets "bored," they will lose focus and have difficulty refocusing.  When children play by themselves or with other children, they learn important social skills, creative thinking and problem solving.  When they watch TV, they learn a completely different set of values and not actively either.  There is both active and passive learning.  Active learning is when the child is participating in an activity that helps them retain this information.  It could be singing a song, writing something down.  An example of this is when I wrote the alphabet and challenged my fiance's son to write each letter.  Passive learning is when you watch something and absorb the information.  At a young age, however, not all the information may be absorbed in this manner.  Maybe some facts will and others will not.

Maybe no more than a year ago, my mom handed me an article about games.  It was teaching parents ideas of games to play with their children outside.  They were games I played when I was a child.  Seeing something like this makes me very sad.  I know we are a world that is constantly rushing around until we are exhausted, not leaving time enough to enjoy with our families.  But is the extra three dollars worth losing your family, losing your relationships with your family, your children?