Screen time

B.A. was not pleased. The girls were off to gan and I was davening. Usually, he plays by himself quietly or eats breakfast while I pray, but today he wanted my attention. He planted himself between me and the meditational print that I use to focus my intention in prayer. He turned his anguished face up to me and howled, “Ima nooooooo, stop daveniiiiiiiiing!.”

At least he’s honest about his motives.

He grabbed my skirt in fistfuls and tugged until he heard threads rip. He stomped around the apartment, raging and sobbing. This is a common scene in our house. B.A. and A.N. have, let’s say, heightened emotional responses. And Y.B. is an epic sulker. I’ve got a high threshold for pint-sized drama.

But it was difficult for me to concentrate. I thought, “Maybe I should start letting this kid watch videos.”

* * *

When I was five, my dad told me that my friend’s family didn’t watch television because “her parents don’t believe at it.” I squinted at our own television set. The tooth fairy and unicorns were one thing, but television? Television pretty clearly exists, right?

 My husband and I don’t own a television, and we don’t put on videos for the kids. One of my favorite bloggers observed that the people who are the most smug about not owning a television are often secretly addicted to streaming sites like Hulu. I hope I am not ever smug about my choices, but I certainly do like watching, well, anything. I try to approach visual entertainment the way I contend with most of the broader culture—I take in what’s joyful and ennobling and provocative and instructive, and I filter out the rest.

My kids watch some things with me on Youtube—viral holiday videos, concert footage of musicians we like, animated videos of shmaltzy Israeli nursery songs, montages of baby animals cavorting. It’s a family pastime. But so far, I have not adopted the practice of turning on a kids’ video and leaving them to watch it.

* * *

Back to B.A.’s tantrum. I kept trying to pray and contemplate, and he kept raging. Finally, he trudged into the nursery and involved himself in play. After I finished, we read books together on the couch.

Now, I write, he is nestled next to me, making a pillow tower and chattering to his sock monkeys about trains. “Sitting with stupid,” he reports happily.

And this is why I don’t put on videos for my kids. My strategic neglect of them usually results in them creating their own solutions. I don’t want to keep them calm and entertained. I don’t want them to see me, or any other outside source, as the key to their happiness. And I want to him to know that his needs are very important, but no more so than anyone else’s. I feel like it’s hard to convey this messages if I rely on videos to smooth things over or keep them occupied.

Of course, this approach has a lot to do with the particular temperaments of my children. They don’t make much mischief. Like me, they veer from serenity to rage with little in between. They are calm, independent, and cautious. I think some of this has to do with our parenting, but I’ll never know how much.

* * *

Earlier this week, we had an exterminator come to help us with a bug problem. My husband and emptied cabinets and tried to contain the ensuing chaos. B.A. he raced around under our feet, observing the massing piles of dead bugs and admonishing them, “Mean bugs, oy to you! Ohhhh, mean bugs tired.”

I plopped him on the couch and put on a boys’ choir video he likes. There’s a time for everything.