NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR JEWISH ECHO MAGAZINE'S COLUMN ASK THE THERAPIST

Question:

We are a family with 4 children,ages 2-10. My wife wants to get rid of our television,as she doesn't want the kids exposed to all the immorality,and non-Torah values that are on television. I feel that I need the television to relax during my "down time" after a long day of work,and if we monitor what the children watch there will be no issues. What do you suggest?

ANSWER:

We make a deal here. I address your question, and if you don't like my answer, you nicely keep your eggs in your fridge where they belong, and not aimed at my head, because I just had my wig washed and set.

Deal? Good, so let's get with the program (Groan! Pun truly not intended!)

Before we even begin to address this issue, I will make some assumptions about the TV in your house. Firstly, you live in a community where it is common to have televisions in homes. Secondly, that this is a norm for both you and your wife that is only recently becoming an source of conflict as your family is veering more to the right, as many families in growing communities are prone to doing, and your wife has jumped on the bandwagon in ways you most certainly have not.

The reason I need to set these assumptions down like this is because otherwise the question of the TV become considerably more complex. If your family owns a TV in a community where it is not accepted, then your children are at risk for mixed messages, hypocrisy, confusion about religious identity, and anxiety/confusion about social norms. This would be even more knotty if the TV would be a hidden TV that becomes the family secret. Children who grow up having to keep secrets, to lie about activities in their homes, often develop various unhealthy communication patterns and impaired social or familial relationships.

But in your case, many of your children's friends have televisions in their homes, you and your wife have grown up with television (with no side effects as far as you can see!), and you are a pretty responsible parent and see why not to continue the same pattern with which you were raised—and did pretty well for yourself, if you can say so yourself. So why bother setting up new rules when the old one are working just fine and you need a way to unwind and relax after a hard day?

There are three parts of this issue that jump out at me: One, that your wife is pointing out to you that television exposes your children to unwanted immoral and anti-Torah values and material. Two,you are confident that as long as you monitor your children's viewing, there would be no harmful effects of these potentially immoral and anti-torah values. And three, the television has become a medium through which you relax.

Instead of focusing on television viewing, I would like to broaden this concept to encompass any medium through which there is a potential to access inappropriate material. That would include secular books, magazines and electronic games. This would most definitely include the internet. And this would also include going to places that teach, demonstrate, or simply expose children to these anti-Torah values. In danger of being considered a fanatic, I will point to the streets of Manhattan as one such exposure, and at the Museum of Natural History which proudly boasts about their incredible exhibit detailing the Darwinian theory of evolution, the epitome of heresy.

There are no easy answers.

As a religious Jew, I would encourage you to form a relationship with a rabbi who knows you well, who knows your wife and family, so that when such questions come up between you and your wife, you can receive direction that speaks to where you are religiously, the norms of your community, and take into account that there is room to grow but at which pace may be right for you and your family.

As a social worker, the second two points are more disturbing to me. It is your blasé and naiive assumption that you can control the influences that impact your child's development, and how you feel comfortable modeling to your children that passive viewing of generally inane material is synonymous with relaxation.

I will not engage in discussion as to why it was possible for your generation to grow up this way and turn out fine, and why this pattern cannot continue onto a new generation, because I will not insult your intelligence by thinking it is not obvious to you how the world has changed so radically, that the world you grew up in is an anachronism to your children's. The rules have changed as to what is needed to raise functional and healthy children.

And here is what you need to know in order to make a decision about whether or not to keep the television (and the like) in your home:

The programs you grew up with are not the programs your children are viewing, even on the most child-friendly channel. I challenge you to listen to a cartoon blindfolded and notice the innuendos that are meant to appeal to adult crassness despite an audience of children. The secular world has long embraced the concept of TV being a problematic influence for children (Think Berenstain Bears Too Much TV!), but they are powerless to eradicate the TV as it is a cultural norm; a challenge we do not face because non-TV homes are often our cultural norms.

The concept of family when you grew up was much stronger, much less influenced by outside distractions, that even when TV viewing was part of the family dynamic, other isolating activities such as internet surfing, the obsession with our phones and various apps, and outside distractions such as whattsapp and other social media were not there to take away what other time was left after the TV was turned off. Give a family TV (videos, PlayStation, and the like) and often you take away the hours needed to interact as family. Families today have too many distractions to and television is simply one more thing that decreases the already pitiful amount of time families interact.

I wonder about your attitude of using a mindless activity as relaxation. The purpose of relaxing is to help a person be more productive in their lives. So why not model choices of activities that can be productive in of themselves and promote healthier lifestyles spiritually, emotionally, and physically? If you model using television viewing as a way to unwind and relax, once your children get older and you no longer can exhibit such control over their interests and activities, the attraction of television will often win hands down over any other productive way of changing gears to generate the ability to engage in difficult tasks. Television will win over reading, learning gemorrah or listening to a shiur, and volunteering. Television will be much more attractive than playing games or engaging in sports with siblings and family, over exercise and other extra curricular activities, and even over socializing with friends if it takes too much effort to maintain contact.

Try to tell your teenage son to use his free time learning gemorrah with you when he has his show on. Try telling your teenage daughter to have fun exercising with friends at the local gym when her show is playing. Ha! You obviously have not yet begun to parent teenagers to naiively assume that your control over them lasts indefinitely. When your children are small, they are pliable wet cement. Give it a few years and everything you have taught them—both positive and negative—has hardened into unyielding concrete. It's how you have modeled to them with information as to what constitutes your values about immorality and spirituality; what matters to you, how you view productivity and family time; and the tools you choose to pass on to them. They learn not by what you preach, but by what you do.

It's your choice if the message you want to give them is that the TV is as good a teacher as the rebbe they listen to in school, is as good an activity as reading, art, music, or playing basketball. The message that the TV does the same thing their parents do: nothing.

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My book, Therapy, Shmerapy, can be found in bookstores or online