Recently I had a very precious friend and her son stay with me for a couple of days. During their stay, all three of us went into town for the day. To understand that this is a big day needs a little explaining. Where I live it takes 1 hour 15 minutes to drive from my home to the centre of town. We left home at 8am, and arrived home at 3.30pm. All of us were feeling a little tired from our day.
As we arrived home, my friend turned the TV on and her son sat down to watch it while we unpacked and prepared for the evening meal. It wasn’t long after that I noticed a change in him. When his Mum talked to him or suggested that he have a bath before tea, he was rude and mean. Initially I was putting this down to his being tired.
We all sat down to an early evening meal and again, he was still niggly and being mean and cutting. As we began to eat I could sense that it had something to do with what was on the TV, so I said that while we were eating our meal, I would turn the TV off, and did so.
What followed was a huge learning curve for all of us. The tsunami of insults and anger that came through him was very intense. He was using phrases and wording that were directing harm to all in the room. He insisted that he wanted to throw his meal on the floor. All of this was instant, as soon as the TV was turned off. He literally attacked me and said he hated me in ways that a child of 6 just doesn’t use. He even told me that I hated him, to which I replied very steadily, “I love you dearly.”
During all of this I remained very calm, present and tender with both him and his Mum. We made it through the meal and he did eat most of it, and then his Mum took him off to bath.
While he was bathing, his mother and I had time to talk about what we had just witnessed. We discussed that the energy that was coming through the programme that he was watching had affected him and that the way he was behaving just now was not really him. His Mum was relieved and she said that this sort of behaviour had happened before, but she had not understood what was going on for her child. We discussed that he might continue with it for a little time yet, but to not give in to it, to remain steady and loving, providing a clear strong presence of love for him to return to when he was ready.
After our discussion, I had a meeting to attend so I left them both for an hour. In that time they sat together reading books and talking and the little boy completely settled. He was enjoying his Mum and the time they were spending together. This was really beautiful to feel and to experience. When my meeting ended I came up into the kitchen and began preparing some food for myself and for my friend and her son to take for the next day. Soon after he came out to help and there was no residual effect from his tirade. Together we prepared the food and spent some time sitting on the couch talking and doing jigsaw puzzles.
When my children were little, if they behaved this way when they were tired, I would have simply written it off as their being tired and that I had to just put up with the behaviour until they went to bed. I did not have the understanding to be able to discern if there was more going on than their tiredness.
Our children are very sensitive beings and are affected by what is going on around them, all of the time. To experience the effect that a TV programme had on this young child brought home to me the very deep truth of this fact.
As parents, aunties, uncles, grandparents and family friends, we all know the children in our lives inside out, and all of us have the responsibility to discern and to understand what is going on in their lives and to sense the activities or experiences that cause them to change.
Watching TV is now considered one of those normal things that both adults and children participate in every day. For myself, the above experience has shown me that much discernment is needed in participating in this daily activity. How do we feel after watching a programme? Does the programme really support us to relax or does it incite us into emotional reactions and judgements? The same reactions can be observed in our children. I know for myself that TV was a great babysitter for when I needed to get things done in the house, but now I really wonder if this was truly the case! Very often after completing the tasks, my children would be more emotional and needy than they had been before popping them in front of the TV.
I feel that there is more to the above scenario than we are willing to acknowledge: that how we are feeling and how we plan our days is where we as adults may be able to adjust and change, so that there is less need to expose our children to TV and the energy that the programmes may bring with them. That there is a level of responsibility we can step up to with our own self-care that will in turn support our children.
In the past several years I have chosen to be a student of Universal Medicine and the Ageless Wisdom Teachings that Serge Benhayon presents. I have learnt a lot about myself during this time. Situations in life have shown me just how irresponsible I had been with my self-care and how this has impacted on my family. When I was living tired and feeling run down, I simply did not have the energy to be discerning with activities like TV and in other areas in my family’s lives.
What Serge has shown me is that love of myself is needed first and foremost. I have now come to understand that this love, once chosen, simply expands to having a deep love for others in my life. It was through this feeling of love within that I was able to see the effect that the TV programme was having on this young child and it was the deep love that I felt for him that prompted me to take the action I did.
From the above experience, I feel deeply that many of the programmes that are aired on TV are not supportive of our families living together, with care and understanding for each other. A level of discernment is needed when it comes to inviting the Television into our lives, and a commitment to allowing us to be honest and to connect to how a programme leaves our family, and ourselves, feeling after watching it. Only then do we have a clear choice as to what we allow to come into our homes from the TV. Only then can we eliminate those programmes that do not support our family to live in the harmony that is the natural way of being, when living together as a community of people that a family is.
Published with permission of my friend.
By Leigh Strack, Eungella
Further Reading:
Doing the Unthinkable: Going on a Technology Detox
My TV Addiction
That’s entertainment? Wired for distraction
