by Megan Risley

Created on: February 21, 2009

Televisions are not people. And, it has been proven over and over again how important - how life-and-death vital - human interaction, especially touch, is to a child's development, ability to have relationships and to actualize into the person they were made to be. Televisions can display relationships, but they cannot offer relationships. Children need their parents. They need interaction. Just being fed information, even if it does happen to be educational or informative, cannot be as developmentally responsible as being taught by another person.

To grow appropriately and healthily, a child needs to have healthy interactions with people around them. This includes asking questions of sensitive and gentle adults, being loved and received as they are even in their uncertainty and weakness. A child cannot learn that he is loved by watching television. A child cannot learn that is OK to ask questions from a television. A child cannot learn how to relate - or even that relationships are good and what he needs - from a television.

Television is not evil in its own rite, but when it is used to entertain or occupy the children, it can perpetuate a painful neglect of children by their parents. Television can also be an addiction that many children struggle to stave off, turning to television instead of friends, family and loved ones for comfort. Because television can be somewhat interactive, it can appear to fill just enough of a need for true, reciprocal relationships while at the same time starving the child of true connection and bonding.

Television also does not ask anything of the child. The child can sit and passively pass time, instead of exercising his mind or body. Less, it seems, is learned from even an educational television show than from a do-it-yourself lessons or hands-on experience. Television does not give a child the chance to see what he is made of, and does not actively challenge the child. Television cannot invite a child to consider what he really thinks about the subject matter because it does not allow for a real, interactive response. Television cannot ask anything of a person, and so cannot offer praise or feedback.

Passivity is not how people were made to grow. Children need to be encouraged by real people who can offer then love, strength and example. Television cannot offer these and other necessary things to a child and so, if one wants to raise a healthy, relational, secure child, one needs to provide that to this child himself as this child is learning what it means to be in the world and in relationship. A television can provide distraction or temporary entertainment, but is not sufficient to facilitate healthy growth nor can it provide the much-needed reciprocity of relationship required to make healthy adults that are able to give and receive love. If all a television is good for is entertainment or distraction, then it is certainly not necessary, and is probably even detrimental, to the proper, loving rearing of a child.

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