Disclaimer: Troy and I do not have human children so at the outset, I acknowledge that sometimes you have to do whatever you have to do to get by as a parent. Is this one of those times, though?
It's difficult to write today's blog post--I'm just not sure quite what to say. Maybe I don't have to say anything. This picture tells it all. While having dinner tonight, a few tables away from us sat a mother, father, possibly a grandparent and a child. With curiosity and amazement, we watched a child who was watching Elmo on a portable DVD player as the adults had dinner and "talked." Every so often, they stopped and smiled at how cute the kid looked watching television.
Is this the picture of how our society does life together? It's no longer "Reality TV" that's our problem; our problem IS the reality that TV has become the good, pacifying, nurturing parent. And the bad cop-parent is the real adult who tells the kid that it's time to turn the tv off. But how can parents tell the kids to turn the tv off when we are the ones turning the TV on to be the babysitter at the dinner table?
This past Sunday, the senior pastor at my church spoke on how Jesus loved the children and because Jesus loved the children, we are called to love them too. He lamented the loss of the family who eats dinner together. He pointed out that families sit mindlessly in front of the television; all in the same room without saying a word to each other. He described the glow and flickering of the campfire in generations past where families shared stories and children learned who they were by sitting among the elders and listening to the family history. And now this flicking light is replaced by a different kind of light--that of the HD television screen that is mounted on the wall and flickers bright into the late night. ---Look at this kid's face? His face is lit up by the light of this television screen.
As Troy and I wondered out loud about what this means, trying not to pass judgement because that is another place where our society falls short, we thought of reasons why these parents chose to have their child sit in front of a television screen while the adults talked at dinner. Maybe they were with their child all day playing interactive games and telling stories and making puzzles and playing with toys and this is the only 1.5 hours of the day the child watches tv...maybe the child began having a tantrum right after they placed their meal...maybe they both worked all day and were tired, exhausted and all they needed was just a little of what they would call normalcy.
Or maybe, just maybe, our collective memory has forgotten how to be in relationship. We have forgotten that our kids, no matter how articulate or not articulate they are because of age, they are learning from us what will be their habits for communication and engagement. And maybe we have forgotten the commitment we make as adults when we bring children into this world and the sacrifices we have to make in our "adult" ways so that we can raise these kids to be who they were made to be in this world.
Like I said, I'm having trouble with this blog post. I don't want to pass judgement on this particular family or other families who will be reading this blog and would choose to do the same thing. I just want to hold up this slice of life and ask, "Can we as a society do better?" And to make this slice of life more tangled, our waitress tonight was a classmate of mine from Rider High School in Wichita Falls. She was bussed to my school under the desegregation act in the 1970s that even in the late 1980s Wichita Falls was still violating. She is now married, has a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old, and works 2, sometimes 3, jobs to help better her family. This summer, she will take custody and guardianship of her cousin's two kids, age 15 and 16, after her cousin died suddenly. She loves her cousin's kids and feels so thankful that she can help them through their grief. She's glad to have them come live with her. As she talked, with the flickering light of the DVD player in the background, my heart broke for her knowing how hard she must work to keep it all together.
I guess these parents did one thing right--They tried not to let the kid sit too close to the screen, lest the kid hurts his vision. At least that's what my mom told me if I sat too close to the television screen--it will hurt your vision. What we witnessed tonight hurts more than just physical vision; I can't help but to wonder what kind of hurt vision we have as a society because we have forgotten the sacred contracts we hold in the embodiment of our children. These are not our children; they are God's. Are we holding up our end of the contract with God? Time for a reality check?
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