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
550 Comments
Thank you Leigh, what I am feeling is that we can switch the TV off but it can keep on playing in our heads for years if not decades to come, such is it’s influence that it has had on our lives. Maybe we think we are acting out a part in life, taking on a role that is created and not normal, feeling how we can go into comfort, walk in a way that we feel we are this tough personified persona or air of fatalistic invincibility, when the truth is we have a sacredness we can live as a responsibility for everything and thus can walk and hold a deep stillness or repose-full way so we are connected to our Soul-full-essences. Then by moving and walking in this most Loving way we can undo these treads or those ill living ways and reclaim back our true power in family and relationships from those years that were lost to a screen.
The deeper I go in my relationship to loving the self the greater aware and authoritative I am becoming. It makes absolute sense that when I take care and look after myself I naturally support others and when lived a huge difference this makes in my life and that of those around me.
I have really noticed how this has changed the behaviour of young people in my life too but now it is not just tv it is the constant (and I mean constant) gaming or watching youtube.
When I got back to the UK from overseas after 5 years I got rid of the wall mounted TV fixture and must say that my whole flat feels entirely different and much more spacious and light.
It is very important to discern the quality of the energy that we invite into our living space, as this will have an impact on the quality of our living way.
The understanding that energy comes through us is very revealing and offers an awareness that is not the person that is causing a disturbance but the energy that is coming through them.
Yes Mary, and this blog is such a great example of the disturbance energy coming through a person can cause.
I noticed the change in my children’s behaviour after they watched TV or a movie and decided to limit their exposure to screen time. It wasn’t until I came to Universal Medicine that I become aware of how energy works and I started to understand why the change in their behaviour occurred. What you’ve share Leigh is brilliant and very much needed.
It is shocking the impact that the television can have on anyone who is watching it and the effects are then felt by everyone else so we certainly have a responsibility to be discerning about what is viewed if we choose to have one (or often several now) in our homes. Thank you for illustrating so clearly what played out after a short time and nowadays many children have the TV as a constant background in their lives with no time to process what they are being exposed to.
I haven’t had a tv in my house for quiet some time but there was one that the people I shared the house with and I could instantly tell when the tele was on. Now not having one for a good couple of years it is instantly felt when I am around one and I can feel how it is trying to make its way in, trying to hook you in and I can see how it changes people. What the programs, movies, games etc that we allow in really do have an impact.
TV = a channel of energy. The question is which energy are you letting in. Our need blinds us to this fact.
When TV’s were first introduced into our homes we saw them as innocent objects with the potential to provide educational programs to school children and meaningful drama and news to the general public, little did we know that down the line this object would become anything but innocent.
I’ve noticed how when my toddler looks at anything on the internet or TV – she changes. She gets very sucked in very quickly and it is pretty incredible to witness the instant change in her when she engages with it. It reflects to me her deep sensitivity and the responsibility I have to help her to understand this.
It is no wonder that 80,000 odd children are reported in the UK study as suffering from depression, Not only TV but the whole world has opened up to them through mobile phones and the internet, if that is what TV does to a young child, then no wonder with the energetic bombardment that is part of our everyday lives, that there is so much depression in our young children.
This story of how Leigh’s child friend reacted so strongly to what he was watching and after turning it off indicates to me that what we perceive with our vision is taken into our bodies and ‘digested’ is the same as eating food and it affects our bodies in an energetic way just like physical food does. This proves once again that everything is energy and happens because an energy makes it happen (what Serge Benhayon has been teaching for almost two decades now).
The intention behind a TV programme or a movie has nothing to do with the wellbeing of the viewer…. the only thought is to grab attention, get the hooks in, and hold onto it for as long as possible by whatever means possible. With the advent of CGI and scientific studies watching and measuring audience participation this has become so much more pre-meditated and the cocktail that is coming out the other end is pretty exhausting these days, never letting us enjoy a moment’s stillness and coming out supercharged on motion or emotion.
Leigh, what you write is quite shocking and how quick the effect on the child is!
I have observed this time and time again in my own children and others. There is far more going on than we wish to see for fear of exposing our own comforts.
Also, parents have shared with me that they put a movie on for their children to keep them quiet and to give the parents a break. It is like giving ourselves time-out but this then backfires when the children are not themselves after having screen time. This makes me question, how often are we using technology to babysit our children and what are the consequences?
There is much more for us to consider and be open to exploring about what we are really getting energetically from watching TV. Anything we allow in to our bodies has an impact, be it food or drinks, emotions, music and TV and it can either dull us or inspire. Why is it that we can become addicted to a TV show? What are we choosing and why and are we truly open to feeling the energetic effects these activities are have on our body and being and our families?
It saddens me that many many people as I write will be sitting motionless in front of their TV’s some may have not got out for a while and some may find real life too scary so have carved a habitual habit of retreating behind the screen. Whatever the reason TV life is never ever any substitute for true connection and will always ultimately make us worse off.
Oh how I wish the world were also onto it – the common sense wisdom you share here! Behaviours in young people are becoming more and more erratic and with more mental health problems then ever before we really do need to look at the energy that comes out of TV screens.
Having a TV on in a room with young children is like inviting an unknown stranger into your home without discerning what energy they bring with them.
Yes, and letting them talk to the children unsupervised.