Most parents know that they are fighting a losing battle if they are too orthodox about their restrictions.  Never allow your child sugar, and he will begin to crave it or sneak it. Never allow your child even to pretend that his Tinker Toy is a gun, and everything will become a gun (including graham crackers chewed into just the right shape!).

 But what happens when allowing your child to do the very thing you have restricted compromises your values?  Video games are a case in point.  There are parents, many in my practice, who have done a yeoman’s job of keeping screen time out of their children’s growing years, knowing that children thrive on interactive, creative play and social activities. Now they are faced with their child being “the only one of his friends who doesn’t have video games.”  This is a real tough one.  I assure you that there is no perfect, one-size-fits-all answer to this dilemma.

 If you are a parent who has managed to keep X Box, DS, Wii and the like out of your child’s life, I applaud you!  There is absolutely no reason that is good enough to have such entertainment in your child’s life before he is elementary school age. That said, I am not sure how long it will last or should last. A big part of growing up and developing social intelligence has to do with fitting in, speaking the language of peers. For most kids that is somewhere around 7 or 8 years old.

 When my children were in 4^th or 5^th grade, and I had successfully kept network television out of their lives, they complained that they were the only ones on the lunch benches who didn’t watch The Cosby Show. They felt out-of-it and couldn’t participate in the Friday reviews of the Thursday night show. “Well,” I said, “then let’s figure out how to make this work for you.”  And after homework and chores, Bill Cosby and his television family became part of our family once a week.

 Deciding if you should let video games into your child’s life (and yours by extension) has to do with several things, specific questions you need to consider about your child and yourself.

 About your child:

•  Is he able to entertain himself?
• Does he get his homework and chores done without much urging?
• Is he able to follow family rules?
• Does he try to negotiate his way out of limits?
• Does he tend to become an addict?
• What will not having video games mean for him?

 About you:

• Are you able to set parameters and limits around various privileges?
• Are you able to withstand your child’s budding debate and negotiation skills?
• Can you tolerate his complaining and whining?
• Can you create reasonable, appropriate, and therefore effective consequences?
• Are you able to follow through on those consequences for limit infractions?
• Do you know why video games are an issue for you?
• Is this really about your child, or is it about you?

  You need to consider carefully what having and not having video games in your child’s life will mean for your child and for your whole family.

 I believe in most things in moderation.  When the time comes to introduce into your child’s life something that has previously been withheld, think about taking very, very small bites. It is kind of like introducing new foods to an infant. Then watch how your child handles it, how it affects him and the family.  If the use or non-use takes over his life and yours, then likely your child is not ready.  Modulating is a skill that grows over time.

 There is one bit of reassurance I will share. Your children will pick up your true values and beliefs regardless of the extent to which you allow things such as TV, video games, war toys into his life.  Your child watches you, notices your facial expressions, hears you talk to others. Your messages are being transmitted and received all the time. Your discussions around the dinner table, in the car, at tuck time communicate your values, and your child is taking it in. He may not be able to agree with you; his is job is to fight you like the dickens, as he becomes an individual. But he gets it.   You may not see the result now, but when he is a father, you will see it and smile!

 Why on earth does anyone want her toddler (or infant) to read?

 Then I saw in the newspaper today that Docia Zavitkovsky had died.  Docia, a matriarch in our field, dedicated her entire 96 year life to young children, to raising consciousness about the importance of our children’s early years as the foundation for a rich and satisfying life. She was the founding mother of Play Matters, a nonprofit organization that places play at the heart of early childhood. What would Docia have said about this advertisement? I shudder to think.

 I am not sure which part of the radio advertisement bothers me the most…that parents are pushing their children in the exact wrong direction? That parents are so competitive in today’s world that they are taking desperate measures to give their children a perceived advantage that can actually be a disadvantage?  That merchants and advertisers are taking advantage of naive parents, making money off of them? It all bothers me.

It reminds me of Baby Einstein. The inventor made a fortune off of all those parents who were convinced that pouring images into their infants and toddlers via a screen would actually make them smart. Have you all thrown out those DVD’s yet…or better, asked for a refund?

 How do you grow a child?  Our very youngest children are nourished by interacting with people and with their environment. They learn and grow by feeding the right hemisphere of their brains with sensory and emotional and social experiences, through interacting with all that they encounter in their world. Learning in the early months and years of life is about play, exploration, trial and error.  It is priming the pump, laying the foundation for learning to read and other left brain experiences at the right time, and that is much later. How interesting it is that you can teach a toddler to recognize a word by repeated (boring) exposures to that word, over and over and over. But show him that word when he is six years old, and he’ll have in a minute or two.  And to top it off, he’ll even know what the word means!

 Would it be too evil of me to cross my fingers that Baby Can Read is a total flop? I pray, for Docia’s sake, that not one more DVD is sold.

 We have been through this kind of revelation too many times before. With sports stars and politicians…President Clinton, John Edwards, and Koby Bryant, to name just a few. There is never a right answer. How does a parent explain poor judgment, poor choices, unethical or immoral behavior?

 Just like the others before, this is a tricky one. It makes even the most confident parent sweat. And it brings up many different issues and questions. Rather than to try to offer answers to the touchy questions which could spring forth, I offer the Tiger Woods story as another opportunity to talk with your children about real life.  It is an opportunity to have multiple conversations on a variety of topics, many starting points listed below. At the very least, this latest, disappointing news gives you an opening to underscore your personal beliefs and values. Those are the ones you pray your child takes with him into adulthood.

• Do you always believe what you read in the paper or in print?
• Do you believe all of what you hear on the news?
• Can we really know the whole story? (about Tiger or anyone else)
• What is gossip?
• What happens to the victims of gossip?

• What is a hero?
• Who are your heroes and why?
• How do people get to be heroes?
• Do we expect more from heroes than from regular folk?
• Do heroes have an obligation to behave in certain ways?
• Does having a lot of money make people happy?
• Does having a lot of money give someone permission to do things that are immoral or illegal?

• Is there such thing as a perfect person?

• What is the difference between a mistake and a bad choice?
• How do people learn from these?

• What is forgiveness?
• Should people who make bad choices be forgiven?
• Should people who make mistakes be forgiven?

• Do “famous people” ever have a “private life?”

• What does marriage mean? (Here is your chance to talk about the sacredness and the obligation of marriage vows)
•  What does trust mean?

 If you child asks what Tiger did, depending upon the child’s age, the starting point is  “It is reported that Tiger was having a close relationship with a woman who was not his wife.”  Remember to follow your child’s lead and do not offer more than he has asked. Less is likely enough.  Not answering or avoiding the question will give your child a different, stronger message. That message will be about your willingness to communicate with him. Children whose parents answer their questions will come back with more questions.

 I don’t envy any parent having to discuss infidelity. But I believe that it is only a small part of the discussion.   There is so much more to be learned from this and from all the other fallen hero news stories.  Take advantage…but only if your child brings it up first.   

In today’s world of so much, so young,  deciding  what is okay and what isn’t can be daunting. Remember how many of you thought Baby Einstein was a good idea?  Now parents are scrambling for a refund. Who knew? (By the way, I did, and I have been steering parents away from Baby Einstein and all screens for young children for years.)  In response to my last post,  I received a thoughtful, detailed  response from a reader, Sharon Gold.  She recommends a website to help parents to decide if particular movies are appropriate for their children. The website does not judge; it gives information.

“…  I recommend to you and your readers a website called “Kids In Mind” (www.kids-in-mind.com). This website uses objective criteria to rate films on a scale of 0 to 10 in three categories: (1) SEX/NUDITY, (2) VIOLENCE/GORE & (3) PROFANITY. The site also explains in detail why a film rates high or low in a specific category, and, for the parents’ benefit, it lists scenes in the three categories. In addition, the site includes instances of SUBSTANCE USE, a list of DISCUSSION TOPICS that may elicit questions from children, and it sets forth MESSAGES the film conveys. …the site does not make any judgments or age-specific recommendations. ..”

But knowing if a movie is okay for your child may only be half the battle. In today’s highly competetive parenting environment, when parents don’t want their child to be left out, to be the only one who hasn’t seen the show, it is even trickier to make  the tough call and say No! Choosing not to allow your child to see the movie that everyone else is seeing is just that– a tough call. Likely, you’re going to hear about it from your child and from your friends, too.

I use the word choose purposefully. You do have a choice, after all. That may mean that you are bucking the tide, you are a salmon swimming up stream, and that your child calls your “the meanest mom in the whole world,”  but so be it. Only you know your child, and only you know what media content supports not only his current development but also your values.

You will never regret saying no, making the hard call  for now.  No can be revisited. But you can never take yes back. Once the movie has been seen, the images stick and the messages resonate.

 It is a child’s rightful job to try to get the very most of whatever he likes the most, be it candy, television, computer time.  It takes many years for a child to develop the ability to see the big picture, thinking about why something might not be so good for him in the long run and applying that knowledge to his choices and behaviors. (And that ability, controlled by the prefrontal cortex of the brain, is not fully developed until a person is in his early twenties.) Therefore, your child needs you to put the brakes on for him.

 Let me give you some real ammo for implementing a balanced diet.   Normal child development can actually be side tracked by too much media input (television, computer, DS, Xbox, Wii, etc…) Children’s brains are “in process.” They are constantly wiring and rewiring themselves. And they do so based on the experiences they are having. You know the old expression, “Use it or lose it?” Well, it’s true here, too.  If certain skills are not used, the brain will rewire itself to use the ones that are being practiced.  Children’s real life skills, the ones they need for functioning in the context of life—social interactions, problem solving, conflict resolution, compromise, reading emotion, etc..—can get rusty.  The neural pathways that have been well carved enabling these skills are plowed over, and the new skills developed for media intake take over.  The brains of young children are naturally wired for intimacy and socialization, for handling emotions, for interacting with people. That’s not something that should be side tracked. If fact, children need more experience with these, not less.

 In this day of wanting to give your child every advantage, when a parent feels she may be depriving her child of something alllll the other kids have, it’s tough to limit media intake.  Children should certainly not be deprived of all that media. It is here to stay, and our children need to become media literate. It will be part of their lives.  The key, however, is the implementation of reasonable limits.

 Just because your child is pining for a Wii doesn’t mean he must have one. And just because he has one, doesn’t mean he should be able to use it at will.  Before you say Absolutely not! Or Whatever you want! take the time to open the lines of communication. Listen to what your child wants, and share what you think is right for him. Create a win-win situation. Think about compromise. Set up a trial period, and be prepared to check in and see how it is going for both of you. This will be a great lesson in compromise and problem solving for you both, as well as strengthen you trusting relationship.

 There are two caveats to keep in mind: 

 It is okay to say No!  Children should not have everything they want. Learning to tolerate disappointment is a crucial life skill.

 It is okay to have a goal. Longing is a potent motivator. Don’t deprive your child of the experience of longing for something, working to get it, and basking in his achievement of his own making.

 Sometimes by taking away from the child, we are actually giving to him…just what he needs.