I remember my excitement about finding Facebook. Finally, a spot where a lot of my closest friends and, well…just everyone… are all in one place.  They were not all there when I started but most of them are now.  There was a rush of reconnecting with folks from high school and some ex’s and a period of weeding out those kids that grew up to be the kind of adults that flame my friends on my wall.  I tried out playing Zombies and did a little Super Poking and eventually sorted through the applications and the friends, groups, and pages that worked and made sense.  Facebook has become more prominent than email for my communication and has replaced my newsletter for my massage practice.  It really has become the center of my internet world, I often find my news there, correspond, check in, play some games and do some business.

The best unexpected pleasure has been finding those Facebook connections that work, and prove to be a very particular kind of connection.  And interestingly, they are not always the same of my friendships that work.  There are several folks with whom my acquaintanceship with has not had the opportunity to advance to a deeper friendship, probably for logistical reasons mostly.  They are on Facebook regularly and my fondness for them has grown as has their impact on my life.  I have read books by their favorite author, followed the comments on their status updates and gotten and received advice and parenting, running, cooking, etc.

Lets Keep it “Secret”

There was recently a rash of groups started and joined called “Secret X” with X being a city name. I admit that I initially joined Secret Oakland, thinking, “Great!  A place to find out what is going on off the beaten track.”  As Secret City groups continued popping up and more of my friends started joining them, I started to get a little annoyed.  Not that I wouldn’t want most of my friends to be a part of all of the secret things in my life… It is more that I would rather with those friends be invited to an event, find a restaurant or see a show that doesn’t have a psuedo-countercultural vibe all over it, while it is all over the internet at the same time. I went back and looked today and it did turn out that the group had turned into something that is not about secrets at all, but about the “Best place to…” which doesn’t seem any different than yelp or the East Bay Express.

This was shortly after the last of the many updated screen formats (which they still haven’t gotten right) and the first time that I started to question my intentions and use of facebook instead of just coasting and enjoying it. I started thinking about having some boundaries around how much I am on it and what I use it for. The simple time equation of the elusive Facebook time versus practicing guitar, exercising, spending time with friends and family is pretty convincing some days.  I have no clear answers yet, just still thinking.  I quickly dropped most of my fan pages, I am no longer a fan of “not being on fire” or “If 1m people join, girlfriend will let me turn our house into a pirate ship ” and I am also not imagining that Facebook groups are exerting any sort of political pressure.

Fuzzy boundaries

As I mention above, Facebook has become an internet hub for me. I love the idea of consolidating my goodreads account and my invitations with Facebook and seeing what people think about the movies that they are seeing.  I mean, why use 10 websites when you can use 1?  Well, for a couple of reasons.

The amount of time that it would take to follow all of these things for all of my friends is outrageous. Actually, the amount of time that I already spend online and on Facebook is pretty outrageous. And the more that I post or repost, the trickier things may get with the accuracy and privacy of my friends, as well.

As these things have begun appearing in my Facebook feed and I have been getting comments on them, I am not sure that I want to put myself out there so much.  Not only are my friendships an interrelated web, but I have varying levels of shared friends, intimacy, and comfort with these friends. These factors are not always related and they are always changing. Partly because I have such a range of friends and I do not want to have the same conversation about X movie with A that I do about Y movie with B.  So I have had odd feeling when seeing a comment from someone that I don’t know very well on my rating of a movie that I saw recently.

Virginia Heffernan writes on nytimes.com:

…Facebook undermined his whole notion of online friendship. “It’s easy to think of your circle of ‘Friends’ as a coherent circle, clear and moated, when in fact the splay of overlap/network makes drip/action painting a better (visual) analogy.” Something happened to this drip painting that he won’t discuss. He said, “Postings that seem private can scatter and slip unpredictably into a sort of semipublic status.”

Maybe most importantly, the defaults of Facebook are to share everything rather than nothing.  Unless you dig through the settings (which involves being somewhat computer savvy) you will have no privacy and every post from every person and every application will show up in your feed. Do I want to think everytime I rate a movie or mark a book “to read” whether I want all 420 of my friends to see this?  Do I want to be the person that is always nagging my friends with unwanted applications and feeds?  I have recently been spending a fair amount of my Facebook time removing myself from groups and pages and hiding unwanted feeds to reduce the stuff that I sift through. I am hiding friends that I am not close to and blocking the applications that I don’t like.  It will be less work and mess for my friends the more I trim what I am putting out to them.  Am I not networked with everyone (and duplicating the posts of mine that they see) that wants to be on goodreads anyways?

Obligation + Overcommitment = Burnout

I think the nature of being a young, active person in the Bay Area is having too many choices and a struggle with overscheduling ourselves. In this way, Facebook is actually the perfect venue because there are plenty of things that my friends or myself are participating in that have an open invitation to go along with it.  Before I was on Facebook,  I rarely got more than 1 evite per month, but now I get multiple invitations per week and sadly, I end up turning almost every single one down.

I do not like to let balls drop and I do not like to not follow up on correspondence with people, but on Facebook, I have found it nearly impossible to keep my standards of communication up while still being friends with all the people that I have interest in. And I still have the balls in the back of my mind most of the time, S-’s wall post that I never responded to, that message that I never returned, etc…

In 2008, Business Week predicted Facebook Fatigue:

Social network fatigue will set in as people tire of getting yet another invitation from so-called friends to join yet another social network. And, in the wake of Facebook’s fumbled social ads initiative, it will become even more apparent there’s no obvious way to pitch products on these sites without turning off members. Social features will wend their way into all kinds of Web services, from search to news, but the gold rush in social networks themselves will begin to wane.

I think they are a few years too early on this. I think that for most people that I have heard about leaving Facebook it is because they aren’t getting enough out of it or because they are pissed off about something.  I do not yet think that social networking, in general, has worn its welcome. And actually, I think it will probably just continue to evolve in ways that make it more appropriate, secure and manageable for people.  I think that a few key players including Google, Wordpress and Facebook are pioneers for the future of the internet, which will be more and more the way that we manage our lives in the future.

So, I am not signing off of Facebook, although I do not feel trapped, I do feel invested in the virtual world that I have there.  But the conversation is just beginning…

I got a credit card in high school because one of my friends told me that I should start working on my credit rating before I left home for college.  She was right, although maybe ahead of her time.  Actually getting the credit card gave me the opportunity to make up for the somewhat inadequate student loans that I was offered by putting my extra expenses on my credit card.  I hadn’t learned much about budgeting back then, although I did  relatively well, I did go into all kinds of different debt.

When I got out of school, I remained broke.  When it was time to start paying off my student loans, I was still broke.

By that time, I had figured out that I was much less likely to spend by not using a bank account and by not using a credit card.  It was the first time that I chose paper over plastic.  Rather than depositing my money and removing it slowly with a debit card, I cashed my check every month and budgeted that way. I found (and still find) that I am much less likely to spend if I am handing over bills than if I use a debit or credit card AND that I was much less likely to stay on a budget if I had a physical stash that I was using to monitor myself.

This is not really a groundbreaking discovery, but instead something that has been understood for quite some time.  A 2008 NPR story reports that this is psychologically rooted in that there is a difference in feeling between actually spending the money versus agreeing to pay the money at a future time.  It notes that the average spending at McDonald’s goes up from $4.50 with cash to $7.00 with credit.

Using cash only also supports my aesthetic and political sensibilities. I appreciate the added benefits of keeping my money local and under the radar.

More recently, I had some experience with bartering. It was a great way to practice massage without simply giving bodywork away. Barter served to build up my reputation, client and referral base. But the more skilled and busy that I have become, I have been less willing to barter. Sometimes, it ended up feeling like an unequal trade andother times it has created scheduling or tracking difficulties and stress.  I also ended up consuming many more services than I would normally, getting my hair done frequently and receiving private pilates instruction (although I do miss these things, they are just more extravagant than my budget actually allows.  I am at the point, where it is worth it to pay people for their work and for me to get paid for mine.  I have my schedule clear for paying clients and I can schedule with any provider that I want without dealing with feelings of obligation or micro-managing the relationship. It was as if I rediscovered the idea of money. It was invented for sensible reasons, but I know all about where good intentions lead…

I have been so busy.  My massage practice has been fully booked and is basically fully booked out until I go on a short vacation in February.  On my vacation, I go to the California Bluegrass Association Camp, which I like to affectionately refer to as “band camp”, so it will not be a completely relaxing vacation. It will be a change of pace and fun, though!

We finished our month of PRIDE classes, minus one that we missed because I was sick with exhaustion.  We will make that up in March and at the same time expect to be finished with the rest of our application by then, as well. Hey, maybe we will even get our taxes done from 2008 by then :)

When I haven’t been busy, I have just needed down time, time for self-care, time for vegging out and time to exercise my self and my dogs.

But, I am missing something. I am usually a very social person. I have noticed that when I do see people, it is more often than not a goal-oriented meeting.  Either they are getting a massage, I am dropping something off, or we have a project to talk about.  It reminds me of times when I sat lazily with a girlfriend and giggled on a bed with her.  I am missing some leisure, some extended intimacy, some chill time.

I have no shortage of folks that I would love this time with, but when I am so overscheduled, I become protective of the time that is not work-related.

On one of these few-and-far-between social outings, I visited with a friend and we discussed our favorite book. A line says something like, “I understand the difference between people and things.”  And I do know the difference, but when my life gets so bogged down with logistics, I am not sure of how much  it  matters.  Sigh…

So a goal for the rest of the year will be to tidy up my schedule, which means containing my work a bit and having days that are completely unscheduled that will free up this kind of emotional room.

I apologize for my long, unplanned absence.  I have heard it is bad blogging etiquette to just drop off the face of the earth with no explanation. It makes sense with the high rate of abandoned blogs and the fact that you may have reserved real estate for me on your home page.  I hope that my blog, like the ones that I read is an anticipated voice and journey. That being said, I have been reveling in my time without kids and it has been a nice break from writing about parenting, too.

Inevitable emotions came up around the holidays.  In making plans for Thanksgiving, I had a phone conversation that made my mom cry.  I am glad that my mom cries, I sort of like to cry.  But, it is not easy to have my mom cry, especially on the other end of the phone, especially with grief that has come through my channels.  Hanging out with other kids and having a more empty house both led to comparisons of  last year, when our lives were filled with beginnings, chaos and hope.

We had made it our goal for the last half of 2009 to spend time with kids that we know.  This ended up happening a lot, especially for J-, with trips to the zoo, the science museum, the movies and circus and childcare.  It was a real treat to hang out with kids that had some combination of being thoughtful, articulate, minding, having emotional control, and being able to process information that they were taking in.  At first, it was hard for me to relax around them. I was just expecting at any minute for them to lose it and to have to deal with some sort of big confrontation.  It was also validating and sad to see how developmentally behind T-7 really is.

The end of the year was punctuated by the fact that we would be re-entering the system in January (which we have).  We decided that we would be working directly through A- County and are halfway through the PRIDE classes. We will still have a logistically tedious licensing process ahead of us over the next few months, with CPR, fingerprinting, TB tests and references to deal with. Since we theoretically could be matched again in the summer,  it is time to clean up loose ends that have accumulated over the last year.

So, the beginning of the year has thus far been characterized by work.  My massage practice is the busiest that it has ever been, plus I am playing music 1-2 times per week and have a few new projects that I am starting.  J- decided to teach intersession at his university because we are paying off some preschool debt.  And, we have decided to make it a goal for our year to save the big bucks for a new roof.  Before we matched with the girls, we had tried to knock out any projects on the house that we would want done for a while.  I can’t say that we forgot about the roof, but it wasn’t really a realistic project at the time.  I am grateful that it has been holding up thus far in this weeks storm!

Other projects are happening in all parts of our lives.  Initially, we settled back into a few ofthe routines that we had pre-kid. Now, we are filling the time up with other things.  We are still considering a timeline and criteria for our next placement, but we will likely be licensed again by the summer.  Until then, we are going to make the most of a kid-free lifestyle.

Did anyone have a good year last year?  It seems to be consensus among everyone that I know that it was the worst year ever. Just about everyone in my community is thinking “Thank God It’s Over”!

I went to a zine reading the other night by my friend artnoose.  Ker-bloom! #81 was actually sub-titled Artnoose and the Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Year.  She writes

My Inner Nietzsche berates me and says that those with power are the ones with the will to power. It ridicules my resentment because it says I can’t be angry at wolves for eating sheep. I hate the Inner Nietzsche; I think it’s a jerk.

Okay, well it is true that you can’t be angry at wolves for eating sheep, but that doesn’t make it suck any less for the sheep, right?  I think we are in just such a predicament, with the terms of our liveliehoods being so far from our choosing.  It is hard to not lose integrity, compromise or get screwed sometimes.

Of course on the most immediate level, my year was defined by 0ur adoption disruption, which J- and I agree is the hardest thing we’ve ever done.  The first months of the year, we spent attaching to T-4 and getting further distanced and discouraged by T-7. The end of the year was spent in recovery. One of the contributing factors to our decision was my mom getting diagnosed with breast cancer.

She has spent the year fighting it through western medical treatment, chemo, radiation etc.  It is not that simple of a story, of course.  She actually had breast cancer  many years ago, which she successfully fought and this new case emerged in the scar tissue of her masectomy. She noticed it some time ago and her doctors reassured her it was nothing. Time passed and eventually, she found a doctor to biopsy. Unfortunately, it had reached stage 2. Additionally, our go0d friend N-’s mom has been near death several times from leukemia. She and my friend  Anandi , who also has breast cancer are both uninsured.

Tristan Anderson got shot in the head by a teargas canister in March and fighting, literally on the edge of life for the rest of the year.  Tristan is not  close friend of mine, but he is a close friend of friends and is a long-time acquaintance. The good news is that it sounds like the setbacks to his healing are behind him and although he has sustain serious cosmetic and cerebral damage, his is finally accomplishing some recovery.

My friends, the hikers were detained in Iran at the end of July.  And still detained. I think of them daily and hope that their spirits are strong. I have so many feelings about this, but there are just too many words to open them here.

I have had many friends experiencing nasty and tragic breakups, the most public of which is zombie mom.

I kinda hate to even mention it in the same context as these other things, but Obama sure has turned out to be a big disappointment to the far left on many counts. (I never really believed it to begin with, but I am sad for the folks that had such high hopes.)  While in 2008, people were getting pregnant with Obama babies all over the place, this year has been.

Good Riddance!

I had a new client recently that had experienced the tragic loss of a baby. At 24 weeks of pregnancy, just a few weeks before viability of the fetus, she experienced a life threatening illness that resulted in the emergency abortion/delivery of the baby. Not only did I relate to her loss, but I was struck by the way that she told her story to me. It was obvious that she had related this story to people many times. She told it somewhat matter-of-factly, but not without conveying how traumatic it has been for her. She pre-empted the big questions that a health-care practitioner were likely to ask, by simply stating that yes, her health issues have resolved and she and her husband have been doing grief counseling.

As she talked so…efficiently, it led me to imagine how many times she has probably told this story. I remember choosing my therapist, in part because I knew that I wouldn’t have to explain the entire story from start. It seemed tortuous to talk to a new therapist after having had 5 therapists and 4 social workers involved along the way. Did I have to prove, yet again to someone else that we had all the bases covered?

I think there is also a part of telling the story at this point that is a little defensive. Although it can be sugar-coated and responsibility shifted, two children were failed. An intention and a dream was failed. It is not uncommon and it is completely “justifiable”. Nonetheless, it does merit a backstory.

J- and I have probably been more public in the last few months and we have been in the position of telling people about the disruption who hadn’t heard. We are often greeted by these people with looks of either excitement, ready to inquire about the girls or that they can tell something is wrong… they are not seeing what they were expecting to see. Although the way that I tell the story has become a little robotic, each time remains difficult. I am still baffled by the fact that there are no “right” answers. I am still angry that I ended up with a kid that all the books in the world could not help me better understand or support. How can this be conveyed on a curbside encounter? Luckily, people are surprisingly aware of adoption issues, so sometimes it can. Most of the time, we just try to focus on the ways that we are moving on and plan to try again.

I have found myself skirting the edge of a mild depression. Life has been growing and filling up over the last 6 months (almost to the point of overfilling!), but also holding a void.  We have been in a place of limbo, grief recovery and anticipation.

We just passed the one year anniversary of having matched, visited and had the girls move in with us.  Last year, Halloween was the first weekend that the girls were here to stay and we took them trick-or-treating for their first time.  I had a blast, we went up to Temescal where the merchants were giving out treats, hosting music and crafts and generally entertaining adults and children alike.  It was the first time that we shared in a ritual, publicly as parents, with other parents and kids.

It was hard not to think about this year as I talked with my friends about what their kids were up to.  We had about 30 kids come to the door, but our street was too quiet.  75% of the houses had their lights off, so many children ignored our block to stay on bigger or more lit up streets.  I did have fun, but I wished that I were in Temescal.

About a week ago, we got a call from A- County letting us know that the P.R.I.D.E. classes will be offered in January. This fits nicely with J-’s winter break, so we expect to take them in order to get back in the process.  Yes, we do basically have to start from scratch…I know, I know…we were perfectly qualified a year ago to get kids from multiple counties, but now suddenly, things are different. Don’t get me started.  But honestly we don’t mind, this does feel like the right path for us, as winding and rocky as it has been.

In a sense, T-7 prepared us for getting an infant. She taught us that parenting a baby could not possibly be any harder than parenting her.  We were often sleepless, we felt the shock of losing our own individuality and freedom.  Additionally, dealt with tantrums of a 2 year-old in a 7 year-old body. I have spoken to a number of professionals and folks that have found my blog that say they work in locked facilities, with the kids that have the worst possible behavior problems, and nothing is as difficult as parenting a RAD kid.  With T-7, we had no idea at any given time what to do and honestly, we really didn’t want to do it.

T-4 showed us that it isn’t all a horror show.  It is possible for an older kid to succeed with a new family.  She endeared us to the wondrous age of 4.  She taught us that kids are resilient and regression is surmountable and demonstrated with an amazing amount of development within 6 months.  She gave me joy in the intertwining of our lives. I loved seeing her drink up her surroundings and experience life by my side.

We understood the fear taking older children and we were scared of behavioral problems.  We were assured that it didn’t have to be so bad.  I am sure it is possible to find older children in the system that don’t have major behavioral problems, but we haven’t met them.  We have heard of kids with less extreme problems than T-7, but I have yet to hear about one that did not have violent tantrums for less than a period of 6 months after placement. We thought this level of problems were the exception and not the rule.

Now we know that social workers cannot be trusted to know, or to say.  We are now the people that we heard about before, the ones who disrupted, who had such an awful experience that they couldn’t finalize the adoption. We And now all of our friends of friends will hear about us if they consider an older child… The reputation comes from a real place.  And now, we are scared, too.

Since the disruption, I have been softening (and getting attached) to the idea of a younger child.  Preventing a kid from experiencing neglect by getting them young is something we can totally get on board with.  We understand what a hard age 6 and 7 are and what a hard spot T-7 was when she moved in.  I look back at my very different levels of patience and understanding with T-7 and T-4 and I see my own need for bonding and interdependence to build a positive relationship with my child.

We are preparing to start over with completely reorganized or criteria around a future adoption.  We plan to stay local, consider children ages 0-4 and only parent one child.  I am humbled and sad, but also more confident and strong.

I know that any kind of parenting is the hardest thing that any of us can do, it triggers all the crap from our parents and our own inadequacies. I see from my friends, and know in my heart, that no matter how easy or tough my kid is, I am going to have days that I loathe my life.  But I also know that I miss being a mom just about every day.

I have been going through a bit of a gluttonous stage lately.  For me this translates into starting new projects that I am excited about, planning trips and spending money on pampering things.  It is hard for me to go to these decadent places without harboring some guilt.  It feels good, but I am not sure that it comes from a place of my highest self.  It is a bit reminiscent of when my  friend, V-, took this to Ayn Randian proportions when he went from being a grimy bicycle tourist/messenger to buying a turquoise mini-truck.  He said, “Everyone else is driving the environment into the shithouse, why should I be sacrificing myself to try and save it.”  Well, I never really thought this was his best period, but luckily it didn’t really last long.

I am not a huge traveler, but a combination of factors has made the call of a few places that I have always wanted to go too loud to ignore.  The fact that J- and I will likely be parents again sometime during the next year and will not be able to travel for while after that, cheap air prices and an accumulation of flyer miles has me doing my small-town-girl version of jetsetting for the next few months.

I also have a theory that some places are going down.  The economy, the environment…they may be irreversibly changed and I want to see them now:

Glacier National Park

Well, okay, in this case, it isn’t actually MY theory that Glacier National Park is going down, it is pretty well supported scientifically that the glaciers are melting.  And even the most conservative folks are now pretty much on board with this.

Actually, it looks like I missed the heyday of seeing the glaciers of Montana.  Even my parents did.  Still, I have had several reports from friends over the years that this is one of the best places that they have seen and it has long been on my list of places to see.

Enter my caching friend Binky del Mar, who moved to northern Idaho not too long ago.  Binky is one of my few female caching partners and I love that about her.  It takes a special kind of lady to cache. One that is comfortable on her hands and knees, looking under dumpsters. One that is more interested in 1) finding the cache and 2) the story she will be able to tell later than 1) how difficult it is or 2) how dirty and gross it is.

Visiting Binky is the perfect opportunity to head up to this great area and visit 2 states that are new for me.  Binky and I are going on a caching extravaganza between Spokane, WA, Sandpoint, ID and Glacier National Park, MT for 4 days.

Las Vegas, The Strip

It is a bit ridiculous

that I from California and have never been to Las Vegas.  I can’t even tell you how many times that I have been to Reno.  Because I don’t know, I’m not sure that I would be able to count.  Being from Sacramento, that is what we did…we went to Reno.

The draw of Las Vegas has grown in the last 10 years as it has become more upscale and I have become well, uh…more upscale.  Hearing about the art, architecture and shows, seeing Anthony Bourdain’s pleasure while eating at Buchon were all part of the draw. The lights and fireworks and the fake Venice and Paris. I know, it’s kitschy, but it’s fun!  Not to mention that they have caches, like every other place on the map. And it is yet a whole other state that I can add to my “states cached” map.

I began looking at air/hotel packages and seeing deals because I just needed a getaway and didn’t want to deal with a long flight or drive.  Then, I heard about the decline in business there and realized that I have no faith that the economy will get better any time soon, and places like swanky Vegas hotels are going to be some of the first to go down, bigtime.  After a few months of looking, I decided to take the plunge and prices had dropped. I couldn’t imagine them going lower.

Vegas is so overdeveloped, with no solid basis for the economy of decadence, other than some weekend traffic from LA.  I know that Vegas will always be there, but in what condition?  Already many of the more “family-friendly” attractions have disappeared, what will go next?  When will it sink below the level of seediness that it was when I was a child? I am imagining a ghost town of these posh hotels, turned vacant, hauntingly empty, guarded and almost post-apocalyptic.

So, this is how my few months of somewhat opulent splurging has come about. I want to get it while the getting is good.

This is a fabulous book that dissects the use of television and video media by children ages 0-5.  Guernsey holds equally the voice of a diligent researcher, looking at existing scientific evidence, and of a concerned parent. It calls to question assumptions that have been made.

On one side, in 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended no screen time for children under two with little research to back it up.  On the other, we have seen an increase in television shows that value education and development.

She divides parents into two categories, the “whatevers” and the “worriers”. She sees that these often fall along lines of class and privilege. While most of her own inquiries are done in the middle and upper-middle class, she does visit the homes of poor and immigrant families. She sees that in poorer families may not have as much flexibility to keep their children away from media since they often share smaller spaces and may rely on the television for cultural connections.

Research on baby videos (such as Baby Einstein) that are marketed as products that will help your baby’s brain develop is just beginning, following strong market demand that led Disney and Sesame to create their own products.

So far, what they have learned it that small amounts of screen time will probably not help with brain development for children under two.  At that age, babies do not have the perception skills to interpret what they are seeing.  The author says that they will probably get more out of watching a parent fold laundry and much more out of being spoken to.  But it probably won’t hurt them, either and for some parents, it may be the only way to safely occupy their children to make dinner or take a shower.  What they may be negatively affected by is background television.  In this case, the active engagement of parents tends to decrease and also the children will simply hear less because of the background noise.  Because of these two factors, children’s learning opportunities are greatly reduced.

For older children, some television shows and video games fare better as tools to build learning, reasoning and social skills.  Most interesting findings, in my opinion are that the age appropriateness of a show has as much to do with structure as it does content. Those of us that have nostalgia for Sesame Street and the Muppet Show will be disappointed to hear that children 3-5 respond the most positively to a short show with a linear, structured and interactive plotline. Some of the shows mentioned are Dora the Explorer, Dragon Tales and Blues Clues.

Additionally, she warns parents to be wary of anything that contains violence.  There is some evidence that children who see violence are less cooperative.  Surprisingly, even violence that results in resolution is problematic.

“…they came to realize that the “be nice, be good” messages at the end of some children’s programs were not getting through to young viewers.  The resolution was drowned out by the usually more-engaging scenes of conflict that drove the plot.”

Ultimately choosing the media in the family is really tricky, particularly if there are young children of varying ages.  A show that may benefit and be age appropriate for a 6 year-old will most likely not be for a 2 or 3 year-old. And in the end, it is parent interaction that is always going to benefit a child the most.

Although I have done my best to summarize many of Guernsey’s findings, I highly recommend this book for those interested.  The book provides an inroad to understanding how kids learn by looking at the ways they do and do not respond to screen time.

She delves deeply into the studies and describes them in minute details to help the reader picture exactly what is happening, which I found fascinating.  Additionally, she does a good job of incorporating her own experience and is very practical about using television as a respite.  She supports the studies through follow-up interviews to experts in an attempt to address the questions as thoroughly as possible.  Since the research really is relatively new, there are times that she hits a dead end because the findings are just not there yet.