When we moved to Bangalore less than a year back, the husband was pretty adamant on not buying the TV. The LH is a man of his own values, and adheres to them earnestly, no matter what the world makes of him. Me, on the other hand, lives by the rules, likes moderation and believes in balance.

Acknowledging the fact that me and the LH don’t converge on any said topic, and to save our kids from the constant dilemma, we made a conscious decision to let me have the final say on parenting issues. Not because I am the better parent(Hell no!, the husband is the epitome of patience, more well read and well traveled, all of which attribute to better decision making ), but simply because I am the more involved parent as far as providing consistent, predictable time with them and their day to day activities. And thus I self proclaim myself as knowing them better

So, when the LH had declared that we won’t get TV, I was game for experimentation, convincing self that I could always find a reason and force him into to getting one if-and-when needed. D and Dlittle hardly watched TV while we were at our in-laws place, as they were used to watching pbskids in the bay area, and could not relate much to the programming here. When they did not seem to care for the existence of the idiot box, I cared less. While youtube serves me well for the likes of Tere mere beach mein, Google news and the morning papers serve their purpose of instilling the little worldly knowledge that I need.

It is close to a year now, and we have survived without the idiot box. We still don’t feel the necessity to have one.

However, the influence on kids, by taking extreme measures of not having the TV in the house Vs allowing restricted quality viewing, while 99.99 percent of the population we relate to has one, is the question of concern.

Allow me to digress here, for the only way I know to get my point across is by quoting happenings and analyzing the after effects. What made me choose this topic for the weekend post is something that happened the day before yesterday night. A good lot of our family and extended family kids(10+ years) are on twitter, we have successfully phased the younger ones out of facebook and orkut(Some had faked their age as 13, just to get a facebook account. I had written about Social Networking some time back and still believe that it is not a safer place for younger kids to hang out without parental monitoring). We got them on to twitter, some have even started blogging. I feel twitter is much more simpler and transparent and makes it is easy for us parents/guardians to keep a watch.
(My dear handful of readers, before you judge us to be a crazy internet addicted family. Let me tell you that our business revolves around social networking, we have 2 software engineers in the making, one JEE zone topper, all die hard fans of their chacha’s/maama’s bindas attitude on life life-is-short-do-only-what-you believe-in-and-what-gives-YOU-happiness and entrepreneurial capability and keep asking for fun projects to do. So, it is not entirely our fault that our family’s primary mode of communication has become direct messaging via twitter instead of phone. phew!).

Before I go on, let me first formally introduce my nephew to this blog. Babio, as Dlittle lovingly calls him, is my 13 year old nephew, a very very sweet kid, staying with us and studying here. Babio came into the office room asking if he could open a twitter account for his sisters. You guessed that right. An account for D and Dlittle. That’s when it hit me that I had taken a twitter account in D’s name in early 2007 and even tweeted one mere line. Call me nuts, I did it. And conveniently forgot about it. I opened up the twitter page and D was supremely excited to read her name there. In less than 2 minutes she demanded the page background be changed pink, to be made very colorful like a rainbow.

Then comes the defining moment, leading to this heavy duty post.

She spots her name on the browser url – http://twitter.com/hername, selects just her name using the mouse and asks –
If I type Dlittle’s name here, her page will come?

“P.A.G.E?”. You said PAGE?

When I told her that I had not created Dlittle’s twitter page yet, she says in these exact words.
Sign up, mumma. Sign up.

S.I.G.N U.P????

Where in the world did she get that? S.I.G.N. U.P. Still remains a mystery. When asked, she simply said, I was imagining about it. Whatever imagination has to do with knowing “sign up”.

One other time, Firefox crapped out and she refused to use Safari. Saying she only likes Firefox, the orange colored thingee. Yes, thingee. Nothing else.

Yet another time, madam was installing adobe plugin. When I happened to see it and asked what in the world she was doing, she says that the video will not come unless she does it. She just has to keep clicking the second button on the right and it will work after that.


Which brings me to these points to ponder. Are my kids getting more than the needed dosage of computer time? Have we unconsciously s u b s t i t u t e d computer time for TV time. If yes, is that a good or a bad thing? Should we continue without the TV, or should we get one for the heck of it. If we get one, with our ever increasing demand for time, will we be disciplined enough to restrict the timings? Will my kids feel left out when their friends discuss some popular TV character? Is that something to even care for?

It is not that we are completely deprived of movies and we plonk ourselves in front of the computer the minute we wake up. D hardly gets half an hour of computer time, 2 – 3 times a week. Every now and then, we get the projector from our office(thanks to owning office assets ), dvd’s and project the movie on the h.u.g.e wall we have in the living room. Spice it up with ice cream or popcorn, the kids have a blast. Idea is to make it a special once in a while event instead of a routine.

I don’t have answers, but I do believe that my kids would have sooner or later got into the internet/computer world, just based on the nature of our job. Based on them being exposed to a home office server, 3 laptops, big screen monitor and the likes. Based on us preferring the computer(internet) to communicate long distance. Based on them watching us running to google baba for anything and everything. (Seeing us printing maps, looking up directions before going out. Checking out restaurant reviews. The other day she asked me something , I said I am not sure. She says, type it in google, it will tell you).

So, are we going to acquire the idiot box or not? The dilemma continues!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS