Moving Images

One of the items in the Harry Potter books that I find fantastic is the fact that, in the world of wizards anyway, people in paintings and pictures can move.  They go about their lives and decide to appear (or not) in a particular frame.   I find it to be a very appealing concept for some reason. If only...


Ahh..the moving picture. It has a certain appeal doesn't it?

While writing this entry I could hear the whisperings of three children — two of them my own — sitting in our television room.  They were watching Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Prior to that the two boys had played on my daughter's NintendoDS while she hurriedly did her homework.  It was a cold, rainy and windy day so I understood how indoor activities appealed to the assembled eight and ten year-olds.

For reasons which are not completely clear in my own mind I often grimace when my children ask me whether or not they can watch a movie, television, or play on their DS.  What I don't completely understand is why they do not choose one of the many other options that they have.  My son has a large amount of Lego and cars. We have books, train sets and both children have a stereos.  For some reason, however, when friends come over they tend to always converge around a screen of some sort.

I need to be fair though.  On sunny days they want to play outside.  I also tend to forget the many times that they sit and read a book, draw or play with their stuffed animals.  Come to think of it, they do more of that than sit in from of a screen.  So why is it that requests for screen time carry with them a factor of ten in my mind?

We try hard to limit the amount of screen time our children have.   In our household we have four screens.   One television, two laptop computers and one NintendoDS.   Compared to many we would be considered screen-poor.  Only one child has a DS.  We do not have multiple televisions and one or more game consoles.  We do not have a library of hundreds of movies nor do our children have a shelf full of video games for the DS (they have two, one of which is Brain Age which came free with the device).  I have heard a few of my children's friends utter, with surprise, that we only owned two video games or that we did not have a particular DVD or a TV game console.

I have to say that I am proud that my children have a fairly balanced view of their options when it comes to entertainment and pass times. They like reading, they like being outside and being engaged in physical activities.  They enjoy cooking with us, they enjoy playing board games and listening to music.  They love drawing and painting and singing and, yes, they like watching moving images.

Having said that my face still distorts into a grimace when I hear "Dad?  Can I watch a movie?"  Hmm...maybe I am the one who watched too much as a child?  Strangely I think I turned out OK.

Time to hop into my picture frame, disappear for a bit, and come back once I have grown up.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!