What Are Your Children Watching?

“Seeing comes before words, the child looks and recognises before it can speak”- John Berger.

My vivid childhood memories consist of a well-rounded combination of playing imaginary “mother” with wooden spoons, reading classic novels and most importantly, the never-ending fight for the remote control to obtain my well-deserved television time. It is a world known fact that children, especially toddlers spend most of their recreational time engaging with media. Numerous studies have been dedicated to media effects on children’s beliefs, behavioural patterns and understanding of the world. According to a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, called Kids media and the new millennium, “media exposure starts quite early”.  The study exploring children’s use of media in the 21st century explains that children between 2-4 years old consume over 4 hours and increases rapidly from primary school onwards, until it declines just before secondary school.

My TV time was always filled with intense concentration and deep reflections about the characters followed by proclaiming myself as the main female character. At the time, my options were quite limited as DSTV only provided two main channels dedicated to entertaining children full time. Things have changed significantly since then, in the kind of information available, as well as how it is comprehended and incorporated into children’s belief system. As the modern society provides various media options for children and young adolescents, they are no longer restricted when it comes to entertainment; kids can access all kinds of programs via TV, phones, tablets and computers. As their options become endless, parents may find it difficult to monitor the immense level of information being absorbed by their children daily.

My inspiration for this feature started a few days ago when for the fifth time this week, I observed my 7-year-old niece, as she set up an iPad in front of a table mat, while eating dinner. She pulled up “YouTube kids”, an online video streaming website specifically for children. She typed in “Horrid Henry”, immediately due to my curious nature, this time I proceeded to ask a thousand and one questions.  Who is Henry? Why is he horrid? And who is your favourite character?

She said with immense confidence, “Horrid Henry is about a naughty boy named Henry, he hates vegetables, he eats lots of junk food and he hates his brother who is a really good boy”. Naturally, I made my self-comfortable by her side, and watched an interesting episode of Horrid Henry. In this episode, Henry’s little brother lost a tooth. This made him very upset because all his friends had lost teeth at some point, resulting in a visit by the “Tooth Fairy”, who rewarded them with money under their pillow.  Since he had waited patiently and was yet to lose a tooth, he decided to take the matter into his own hands. First, he stole his brother’s tooth and put it under his pillow, only to wake up in the morning and it was gone. Secondly, he ate all the sweets in the pantry, and even requested that his friend punch him on the mouth. Thirdly, he borrowed a mouthpiece that would make his tooth appear to be missing, thereby receiving plastic money, rather than real money from the “Tooth Fairy”.  Eventually Henry’s tooth finally falls off and he swallows it by mistake.

As simple as the story may seem, there are several valuable lessons to be learnt and others might not be so great. The most important being that everything happens at the right time and should not be forced into place unnaturally. Then there’s the idea of money being a valuable object, portrayed to be so esteemed, that Henry was willing to do anything for his tooth to fall out to get one pound.  The entire episode practically revolved around Henry’s obsession of getting money from the “Tooth Fairy”.

Of course, we live in a capitalist society, where we are taught to bite, claw and step on people for money because it is placed above all as a main life goal. Ultimately I would prefer to connect losing a tooth as a reward for getting older rather than for money.