Tag: TV

Broken Christmas Shows

I spent my Sunday afternoon watching Christmas shows and doing school work.  I am ready for the holidays and like to watch them.  Sometimes I even watch them in the summer.  

 

My favorites I watched are:  A Year Without a Santa Claus, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, and Nestor, The Long Eared Christmas Donkey.  After enjoying these awesome movies, I realized how in each one of these shows there is someone who is broken.  

 

In A Year Without a Santa Claus, there were a lot of broken people, but together all their brokenness helped each other accomplish a miracle by sticking together.  In Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, Rudolph and Baby New Year are broken.  They both have things they were created with that other people have a problem with.  They both had to overcome their insecurities to move forward and help each other out of trouble.  In Nestor, Nestor was broken.  But he overcame the giants in his life and used his brokenness to carry the greatest gift!

 

I don’t know the writers of these shows and I don’t know what they were thinking when they wrote, but I like to think they were writing to children.  Children and adults need reassurance that their brokenness is useful.  They need to know that God can and will use whatever is broken in your life for good and for the good of others.  They need to know that God created them not perfect but with some flaws, so that He can give them strength to accomplish His purpose for their life and for His glory.

 

Perspective comes from wherever in your life that you are willing to let down your guard and allow God to use. It’s OK to be broken, it’s the way God made you!  Use your brokenness to find your miracle and someone’s blessing.  Even if it’s through a Christmas Show!

 

Children and Technology: What is Appropriate?

In our technological society today, we pick up a child from school and give them a phone or tablet and we don’t have to engage with them, talk about their day or even speak to them. I am so guilty of this also. It’s so easy to do this, but what happens is we allow our children to learn from the internet. Do we really want our 3-16 year olds watching YouTube videos of whatever in the car or in their rooms all alone? Do we really know what they are watching? Do we want to have to re-teach simple skills to our children because we were too busy or to lazy?

I find myself in this web (literally) every Sunday afternoon. It’s my quiet time, my me time, time to myself. But when my grandson is finished playing outside with friends, he goes into his room to play video games and watch YouTube. I’m not saying YouTube is bad, I’m saying we need to monitor what our children watch and listen to. They can learn a lot from what they see on the TV, internet and video games, but not in a good way.

Then they bring this knowledge to school, church, shopping, etc. And it is not appropriate. They can’t separate from what they see because they haven’t been taught the difference. Some children believe that what is happening on TV is real or what is being said they can say. But they can’t!

Children need to see us, hear us and listen to us. We need to see our children, hear our children and listen to our children. The worst scenario is at a restaurant where mom and dad are on the phone and the children are bored because they aren’t doing anything. So they are fighting with the silverware, sugar, ketchup or whatever they can find and get reprimanded because they are making a mess.

Talk to your children, find out what they are interested in and let them know what you’re interested in. Have a conversation! Make up a story! Sing songs, make up songs, read a book together or tell a joke and laughed so hard you want to pee on yourself. Be all there! I know, that’s me too! My grandson and I have the most fun doing this at bedtime.   And what really funny is we are not getting ourselves sleepy by doing this. We are actually keeping ourselves awake, but we are having fun.

Find some way to connect to your child and keep them away from things you know are too old for them and things they spend way too much time on. The internet is an interesting and helpful place, but only if used appropriately.