Do all kids love TV?

Kids. They laugh, they run around, they scream, they play. They are anything but quiet, except they are sitting in front of a TV. Sounds familiar?

The TV is for most kids the best friend somehow. They love to spend their time only looking at the screen. Mostly because many parents just need a little break, so they switch on the TV, let it 'take care' of their kids. For many people it's actually the first thing to do in the morning, before they prepare breakfast. Living without it? No way.

So I was thinking how important is TV in our everyday life? How much does it affect and influence us? How would our life be like without TV? And is it possible to have some happy days when we don't have the chance to watch anything on the screen?

I already told you about Aly, my friend's 4-year old daughter. In many ways she lets me think twice about stuff and gives me another point of view. So I decided to talk to my fave little girl. Aly always smiles when she sees me. Last time I visited her she took my hand and guided me into her room. "Come, I wanna show you something", Aly said. Her Mom bought her a puppet theater and she handed me two of her puppets. "You play the prince and his speaking horse and I am the beautiful princess." "So only I have to play a role?", I asked and Aly grinned.

The moments mother and daughter spend together are priceless.
pic by Rolands Lakis

We played a while and then she told me she loves the theater. "It's always different, not like on TV." Many people look at a screen, they all see exactly the same. But when you watch a play, every performance is different. I haven't actually thought about it that way before, so I thank Aly for that. She doesn't really like watching TV much, maybe because her Mom doesn't like it either.

do you prefer to see a play or a TV show?
pic by Diego Torres Silvestre

They prefer to do their own shows - these were the words Aly used. Being only one of 1,000 people isn't that difficult - she clearly doesn't know how many people actually watch a TV show, but that's nothing that matters to get her point - being one of two is something really special. "Only me and my Mom know what we do and I love that", she said.

"People only think in large numbers. But why? Why should that be better?" I couldn't give her a real answer. Why is it better being one of a million than one of two? Sounds more rare, special? But is it really special to know something that everybody knows? When you watch TV it's always the same, that's not close to real life. You can watch the same show twice and nothing changes. But when you watch the same play several times, it's always a bit different.