Spirit in Action
Healthy Media Choices
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. [music] Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along My guest today for Spirit in Action is Mary Roth's Child, founder and staff person for healthy media choices. Mary discovered a strong and clear leading to help families make smart and healthy choices about their intake of media, particularly TV, video games, and computers, media with a screen. She draws on a wealth of research about the impact of media on our brains, values, and lifestyles to help individuals develop workable plans to balance their needs and demands. She hosts a weekly interview program called "How are the Children for Brattleboro Vermont Community Radio?" W-V-E-W, and she clerks the task force on youth for New York Yearly Meeting. She joins us today by phone from the East Coast. Thank you so much Mary for joining me for Spirit in Action. It's a pleasure to be here, Mark. I think this week I caught you in Vermont, right? You're always bouncing back and forth between two locations? Right. I actually am in New York. How do you keep bouncing back and forth? Is this just because you're a hobo or something? Well, the nonprofit healthy media choices is actually registered both in New York and Vermont. I work out of both places for months. I've been there a little over two years, and my work is just getting established there, and the radio program, "How are the Children?" originates there. So, I have a date with that program at one o'clock on Tuesday, generally, but a lot of my family is still in New York, and a lot of my work is in New York State. So, I go through New York to get to workshops I give on my way, actually, to update New York this weekend. So, it is a time of transition and growth for us, and it does keep me traveling, but it's very right. Tell us right away, Mary, about healthy media choices. How long ago was it created and what is the purpose of this organization? Helping media choices actually started about nine years ago while I was still running a child care and after-school situation in New York. It was a program all day program had started as an after-school program, emphasizing handicrafts, sense-based learning for children, and so many of the parents had questions about their children and media, and I was seeing so much during the day about the children's referencing media constantly that we started having potlucks to bring our questions and do some research. That part clearly grew, and as it was right for me to leave the child care and after-school situation, the nonprofit was really where I wanted to put my energies, which is really intended to help parents and teachers of children very young children, children ages zero to eight, to come to their own very unique plans for media, and by media, I mean, basically any screens in the home and in the school. What we found is that parents and teachers of very young children are very concerned about media, and there are a lot of sort of how-to books or very well-done research books written for the lay person about this, but there really is nowhere to go in terms of what to actually do. There are media diets, and then there are sometimes at conferences, there are workshops, but you leave, as so many of us do, feeling, "Oh, I really have to take this in here, but I have to do something about it." But our experience is you walk through your own door and your own habits meet you, the people you live with, and there habits meet you, and it's not so easy to turn things around. So what we try to do instead is to help individuals really come to something that's from their value system and is really able to be effective for the people they have in their home, a home with an elderly family member living there who really feel they need to have a television on all the time. It's very different from the home with one young child where the adults in the household can make decisions and we call the family an ecosystem. We feel that we need to take responsibility for ours in a unique way. There needs to be something that's tailored, and that's what we do, is we give tools for finding what will actually work in individual home. Let me be clear about this. I'm sure that there are listeners out there that say "Why should we control, worry about our media, what's coming in, why does it matter?" What are the kind of concerns that bring people into association with healthy media choices? The one that is most striking for people is, well there are two that are kind of equal, I would say, violence and sexuality. The violence is, as anyone who has a television, now it's omnipresent. In children's programming and advertising, during children's time for adult programming, it comes on later, the video games, the whole gamut of material that is very violence-based. And then there's the sexuality where younger and younger children are being targeted, you know, brats dolls, all kinds of things that are supposedly play items that are actually introducing the idea of sexuality defining you, how sexy you are, defining who you are, and earlier and earlier age. I would say that lots of different things bring people, sometimes it's the fear that their child will develop ADD or there's a whole constellation of things that bring people. The way we approach it, when people come, is really kind of from the inside out, that what we see is that being media takes our attention and they take the attention of our very young children in a way that truncates their ability to use their own imagination and eventually their own judgment. There's lots of research that shows that very young children are still in the age of neural brain development and just the fact that they're in front of a light source that's flickering and changing so frequently can have an effect on just brain development. On the other hand, there's the content. Now, there's a great debate about whether content matters. One thing that has been fairly well proven is that children do not get the moral of the story so that when we have a child in front of a program saying, "Well, you know, it's such a great program because it really teaches them to share, the child is not learning to share from the program, certainly under the age of five, probably under the age of eight. They're not learning to share. They're really learning about the character in the program and the character. The only other place they're going to see that character is something to buy. So the underlying thing is where is the development of the attention in the child? Where are we investing the time and attention to develop attention in our children? If a child is watching television three or four hours a day, a lot of their perception of their world is getting formed by the story the media is telling them. But not only that, the images are so strong that they have very little ability, if that goes on and on, to really formulate their own images from their own life. And there are so many examples I could give you that there is a decided difference with young children now, the way that they play, their basic ability to play. So what does that say? It's something about attention and imagination. And for many of us, attention is sort of a tool or a muscle we use when we want to come into ourselves, when we want to come back to ourselves. So what does that imply for us is spiritual beings, for young children developing a spiritual side. So even though people, there's a whole gamut of things that bring people into contact with the organization but the way that we approach it is really go all the way back to the basic movement of that attention and where it is going. And then everything kind of flows from there. So there are actually studies out there that document the change in how the brain processes things, depending on the amount of this electronic stimulation. Right. There are a couple of excellent works out there. One is media violence in children by, edited by Dr. Douglas Genteel from University of Iowa, which is a compilation of a lot of different research studies and really shows that the very young children, they had graphs of how the neurons are formed. And I'm not sure that his illustrations show the difference between children who have lit up and not, you know, lit up for a number of hours a day. But the implication is there. And then just recently the Media Education Foundation came out with a film called Consuming Kids that shows the kind of research the advertisers are doing to show where the brain lights up out of interest. There are a number of studies around brain development. Dr. Michael Brody from the American Academy of Adolescents and Child Psychiatry. He is the liaison to the American Academy of Pediatrics, Media Studies group. He's another resource for anyone who wants to, you know, look into that kind of thing. The other thing is that the big picture, aside from attention, which I think is the basic question, the other question is what story are children being told about what life is? We learn through stories. It's subtle sometimes. We don't even know what's happening. But Media is telling a story. It's telling a story that you can never be beautiful enough and you can meet that sin and sexy. You can never have enough stuff. Violence is the way to resolve conflict. And increasingly the part of the story is, if something's a matter, take a pill. These are the commercially motivated emphasis in media stories. And so we have to question ourselves, is that an acceptable story for us, for our children to be told about how life is really all about? And if not, what is the story? And that story can be based in many different traditions, depending on the family. And part of the process we go through in healthy media choices is to access those stories, to access our own experience our own early learning. What really did us, what taught us what life was about? What our moments of stillness were of presence and what facilitated that and how to bring those elements into the lives of the very, very different lives in many ways of our young children. I was just preparing a show for next week with Dr. Keith Fromm, getting back to the mind aspect. He's written a couple of folks and I'll interview him on this. This is a second interview with him and this one is called, "How was my kid doing the questions that people ask?" He's a former headmaster of teachers and administrators in schools. And he said, "One of the things about ADT is that there is thinking that there is actually a new brain that young people now actually their brains were formed in such a radically different way because of this constant repeated stimulation that in fact when they seem bored, it's because their brains were developed with so much extra stimulation that they can't be captivated by a normal classroom situation anymore. So these were all profound changes and actually Dr. George Gerbner, who is dead now, but he was the founder of the Cultural Environment Movement, which was a very profound movement out of the Annenberg School of Education at University of Pennsylvania. He said, "If you let me tell the story, it doesn't matter who writes the laws. The story is how we live. We live through these stories. So where are we going with this very short attention span and a very commercially motivated storytelling? It's pretty overwhelming for parents and teachers of very young children. The reason I talk to teachers, number one, is some of them use a lot of media in their classrooms, even at very young ages. But aside from that, the teacher is someone who can speak to the parent. So, and very often is having conversations with the parent about what they are seeing in terms of behavior, in terms of attention in the classroom. This is an element that isn't always brought into that conversation, but I can tell you from personal experience that a lot of what people are seeing in terms of behavior is actually because of what the child is ingesting through media at home. So I'm getting the sense that this is happening on multiple levels. There is a subject matter of what's being delivered, and there's also, you know, the media is the message. Are the concerns about this coming from liberal, conservative, or all across the board? Because I think sometimes, you know, sexuality, there are strong concerns about that, often coming from conservative end of the spectrum. Violence, concerns about that are often more often from the liberal end of the spectrum. And then just economic exploitation, hopefully all of us are concerned about that. That's a great question. I would say that the conservative right-wing did own this conversation for quite a while because of the sexuality. And in fact, it's telling that it seems that someone, sort of, briefly showing a body part in the middle of a football game gets a lot more real than constant bloodletting 24 hours a day on television. You know, the sexuality does seem to set a certain part of the society off into a reaction. One cold midwinter evening, just like every year, we had the neighbors over for football, food, and beer. Halfway through the big game, my son tugged at my sleeve saying, "Dad, come to the living room, there's a thing you won't believe." Daddy, there's a boom on our TV, right there for all the world to see. They were dancing all about now, Janet's got her headlight out. Daddy, there's a boom on our TV. Now the Super Bowl's no place for such a crude display, it's family entertainment. At least that's what they say, a time to sell Viagra, beer and SUVs, and to watch some steroid pumped up guys knock heads on our TVs. Daddy, there's a boom on our TV, right there for all the world to see. A magnificent production, a mammary of mass destruction. Daddy, there's a boom on our TV. What could be more awful, a woman's breast in view, right before the sopranos? What's a dad to do? Now it's just a few months later, and already it's begun. The lies are being told, and the mud is being slung. It's still five months till November, and eternity it seems. And every night I know it's going to haunt me in my dreams. Daddy, there's a boom on our TV, right there for all the world to see. Selling crap and hawking war, it's what the media is for. Give me back the Super Bowl, where's my remote control? Daddy, there's a boom, right there on the tube. Daddy, there's a boom on our TV. That was "Bub" on my TV, another gem by John McCutchen. Very much on the topic being addressed by my guest, Mary Rothschild of healthy media choices. For some people, the TV content that raises their concern is the sexuality. Or maybe it's the violence, or maybe it's the commercialism. So Mary, what is the dividing line? Is there some general issue that divides the liberal and conservative approaches to media? There are two things, I would say. One is that there is concern across the spectrum at this point. There is concern and there are various reactions. There certainly is an aspect, which I'll get to in a minute. I'm 62 years old on the last generation that remembers not having television. So you have a lot of the researchers, a lot of the teachers and parents. People who were immersed in media themselves growing up. It's very difficult to separate it out as an element in everyday life. It's always been there like the wallpaper. But there is a huge array of concern. The real number of questions in terms of what the differences are, I would say, are the first amendment considerations. So many of the initiatives that have tried to put some real limitations in place for what kind of video games can be sold to children, for instance under 17, have been met with first amendment arguments and have been unsuccessful because of those freedom of speech arguments. From my point of view, and it's not just me, there's a real difference between freedom of speech for individuals and groups and corporate freedom of speech. Corporations, I'm not sure of my history on this, were given the same first amendment rights as you and me a while back. And that has created a tremendous leeway for corporations to do what they will. This country has a pretty extreme record of letting corporations do what they will. And in this particular arena, from my point of view, there is such a difference between even corporate freedom of speech and the kinds of limitations we put on cigarettes. We put on alcohol, we put on driving because we recognize that there is a responsibility on the power of society to regulate things that could be harmful or that people under a certain age simply aren't equipped to do yet. And that same thinking can certainly be applied to something like a video game, even if it's based on strategy that requires a certain amount of judgment to realize that this is pretend or, you know, I don't even know why people were blighted, but it requires a kind of judgment that this isn't there certainly until 15, probably much later. Dr. Allen Canner, who is one of the founders of the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood, has a really well-done article on the commercial free childhood website on this issue of corporate free speech and how it has, along with other things that our country is unique in really created an incredibly untenable situation for parents. Because marketers really have free reign to target their kids and give them very few legal tools to combat that floodgate of stuff. But the ultimate vote when the chips are down, in your home, you have the responsibility to have the story be told, that you wish to be told, have those conversations be going on. We don't suggest that people throw the television out. I don't even recommend it if people ask, because I think it is better to have it there and have the conversation about it with limited and age appropriate use, rather than just saying, you know, we don't have it, because society is so permeated with these images and references that it can cause a lot more, not just difficulty, but a lot less effective teaching in the home for the child. If you just tuned in, you're listening to Northern Spirit Radio's program Spirit In Action, and we're speaking with Mary Roth's child. She produces radio programs called How Are The Children, and she's director for Healthy Media Choices. Their website is HealthyMedia Choices.org. You can go there, find out more about what they do. They do an awful lot of things. It's a range of media. We're not just talking about television here. We're talking about video games and other flickering screens in front of our faces. One of the questions that came up, Mary, as you were talking, is there an age at which the child's mind is less likely to be damaged? Programs, shall we say? That is to say, maybe we could keep away our children from media until the age of five or six, and then they wouldn't be so hyperactive later on. They would have better attention spans. They would have a different story evolving in their life. Is there an age at which it is less damaging to expose a child to media? The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screens at all under two. None. After two, they say two hours a day maximum. So, from their point of view, the really critical time is on two or two. The recent research about adolescent brain says that the judgment piece, which is really about content, not about the flickering screen, but the judgment piece doesn't really come totally until 25. So, we have a real range of questions about the physiological aspect of just being in front of the screen, and also the content judgment piece. Up until eight, children cannot distinguish between advertising and program content. One of the big issues with your question is not just the brain development part. And part of the brain development question is, if you're sitting in front of a screen, what are you not doing? The best way for children to learn is to manipulate their world. That's why they put stuff in their mouths. They feel stuff. They bounce it around. They throw it. They chew it. That is developmentally the most appropriate way for very, very young children to learn about their world. There's a whole range of things that do not happen when you don't do those things, problem solving. One of the big fears, and this is very well shown in a film from the Alliance for Childhood called Way to the Children Play, one of the huge impact in play. I cannot begin to tell you how many teachers of young children are saying this, and it's no matter what school, public school, all the way to the private schools with very small classes, children are losing the ability to play spontaneously. Children in war-torn countries continue to be able to play. So it seems inconceivable to us that children would not be able to play, but children really are losing the ability to play. I had an instance where, when I was spent with the Children's Center, my assistant and I were 20 minutes or so before lunch or something, and we said, do anything you want. I guess we're probably, I don't know, six children in the room, ages two and a half to five and a half. Do anything you want, but you're present away. They always could. It was a sand table, an order table. And see if you can do something together, and we'll just watch, and you can invite us if you want, you know, before lunch. And they didn't, these children did not say one word to each other. They started dragging their little chairs around. So we thought, well, you know, something's about to happen. And they lined the chairs up. And we very often had a little spontaneous play. You know, if people had a fight, we'd do a little play about animals fighting about something similar and how they resolved it. And so we were always in play. We thought we were going to have a play. When the children sat in the chairs. So finally, lunchtime we went over and said, what's happening? You know, what's going to happen? And they said, we're watching TV. The only thing that they could think to do, and this was without saying a word to each other, was to line the chairs up and pretend they were watching TV. When they were left completely on their own in this incredibly rich environment. Every time I give a workshop, people are saying, children cannot play. If you don't tell them how to play, they have no reserve of their own anymore. Because all their toys are knockoffs from television program or a movie, and they play with the toy in the way that the television program or movie has prescribed. And so they're repeating, they're mirroring, but they're not inventing. What kind of things do you advocate when you're counseling parents, when you're giving your workshops? What kind of alternatives do you help provide for them to control the media access the way that they're subjecting their family and themselves to media? Well, it changes every group, I have to say. There's a whole range of things. We borrow a lot from narrative therapy in terms of wanting to reshape the story. Not everyone feels they have a positive story to bring. They can even think for a story. But we tried to help people, you know, remember Aunt Lucy, who lived through the depression and was always generous with everything she had. Whatever, tell your family stories is a big part. Find them and tell them to your children is a big part of one of the things we advocate. The other thing is this whole time management thing, which is a huge aspect of why young children are exposed to so much media, is the fact that the parents are exhausted. It was the habit in their homes when they were growing up. They don't question it necessarily until the child is old enough to be displaying some unsavory behavior perhaps, or they get concerned about some aspect. But it's not questioned so that if I come in and I know I have a group dinner, it's second nature to turn the television on and have the child be watching, you know, whatever it is that's there. So we tried to look at some of the things that, and there are wonderful people who've done a lot of very good work here, where we say, okay, you come through the door, you're tired, you plug your child in. Is there an other way to deal with that? And what is the long-range situation going to look like if you keep doing that? Because what those of us who have experienced by children are 30 and 20 know is that having that child beside you while you cook that dinner is money in the bank. It is one of the best opportunities you have for the conversations that will be very important down the line. So many people focus on middle school, which is starting younger and younger every day, but that pre-teen time, they say, oh, you know, they're suddenly starting to talk about sexuality. They're starting to want to be away from home a lot more. They're starting to, you know, I know they're smoking or I know they might be experimenting with drugs, and I don't know what to do. What we say is zero to eight is where the actual opportunity is there. So the kinds of relationship building that will have your child be telling you what's going on when they're pre-teamed. So, for instance, having a different ritual. When you come through the door, you have to have it set up, you know, here's your box with puzzles or whatever. I'm going to set the timer for 10 minutes. Don't talk to me for 10 minutes. I'm going to go watch my face. I'm going to have a little time, and then we'll come and cook dinner together. And depending on the age of the child, there's absolutely no age where the child can't be doing something next to you while you're preparing dinner. That kind of what we call not face-to-face time. In other words, you're both working on something together is the best time to find out who your child is, to let them know who you are. And that's what we're squandering. It's not, you know, just that the media is inherently evil. It is not. It is all these media things. You and I use them. We're using them right now with radio. They're tools. And we can use them. We can use them as families, but we have to use them intentionally. That's one question, but the other larger question from my point of view is, if you're doing that, what are you not doing that would be beneficial? What do you not be using that time for? There would be more beneficial for the development of your child, for the development of the family as a whole for your development. Because parents, you probably know Mark, grow as much as children do. We grow through parenting. And so that exchange we have with our children is important both ways. So we advocate putting the child in a high chair with a carrot and something non-lethal to work on. And just even if it's silent, probably even better if it's silent for a time, just working alongside. And the experience of most of the parents I've talked to is that once that becomes established, the myth that it's easier to get the meal done is actually exploded. It might be easier by 10 minutes, even a half an hour. But the pleasure and the relationship that you have with your child because of doing that together, so that's just one example of the kind of thing we help people explore. But people walk out of the workshops with many different, we come to some sort of intention by the end of the workshop, each person. And some people, they aren't a household where their partner, for instance, refuses. They don't want to hear it. They're going to have the television on. They're going to have the television on with wrestling. They're going to have the most violent thing because they just don't buy it. They don't think it's a concern. So I've had people leave with the intention of adding something, of saying, "All right, I understand you have to have it on, but can we go for a walk once a week after dinner together for the family?" Sometimes the only thing people can do is add something. And then they take responsibility for trying to occupy the child so the child isn't totally immersed in this atmosphere that's created by the media being in the home. So that's one extreme with this person felt. That was the only thing she could do. And then there are people at the other end who say, "We're going to try putting it away. We're going to try putting it in a closet." And seeing what happens, some people do a TV turn off. We put in April every year that the TV turn off. We get some people do that and just use that structure. Sometimes schools use that structure where I've given workshops, they've decided, "Well, we'll take this week where we'll all try together. We'll organize things together or whatever to show what we could be doing if we're not watching TV." TV, TV, gonna watch out so you won't get me. Who to lose? I'll turn you off anytime I choose. I ain't gonna let you waste my time. I ain't gonna let you waste my mind. Tell me lies and that's my mind. Tell me lies and that's my mind. I ain't gonna lay on the floor all day. I ain't gonna lay on the floor all day. Let my bones and brain decay. Let my bones and brain decay. TV, TV, gonna watch out so you won't get me. Who to lose? I'll turn you off anytime I choose. I ain't gonna eat all the junk you sell. I ain't gonna eat all the junk you sell. I'll eat an apple and I'll stay well. I'll eat an apple and I'll stay well. I think I'll go and have some fun. Think I'll go and have some fun. Ride my bike out in the song. Ride my bike out in the song. TV, TV, gonna watch out so you won't get me. Who to lose? I'll turn you off anytime I choose. Same old stories, same cartoons. Same old stories, same cartoons. Chasing punch and killing too. Chasing punch and killing too. Though I love you, Kermit Frog. You know I love you, Kermit Frog. I love to catch some polywalls. I love to catch some polywalls. TV, TV, gonna watch out so you won't get me. Who to lose? I'll turn you off anytime I choose. A fun little song by Carol Johnson. It's called TV and it's about making conscious choices about the intake of TV into our minds and families. Which is what my spirit and action guest, Mary Rothschild of Healthy Media Choices, is talking about today on this northern spirit radio production. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. Mary, is it just TV we have to worry about or is there other media we should be thinking about as well? Such is the TV, of course, it's a video game and it's the computer. And to some extent the computer is the most difficult situation because we often use computers and very often we're at home with our children using our computers. So we're modeling a lot of time spent with the computer and how do we deal with that? What are the inroads we can make there? So there's no easy answer to what do we offer. We offer a whole array of things. Mostly we offer the tools for people to come to their own decisions about what will work for them. But we do talk about alternatives. And we try to kind of bust some myths about how difficult children are to be with. My experience is children live up to our expectations. If we expect them to sit next to us and prepare meals with us, it might be rocky at the beginning. But that's what they will expect to do. And they will learn to be part of the family, contribute to the family by doing things like that. The things we consider, drudgery, sweeping the floor, whatever, they can take on its jobs and all of that leads to much more family communication. And down the road, family communication is one of the chief antidotes to drug use, all kinds of things in the teens. So when you mentioned the whole verbal part, it's verbal development in the very early years is a question about media, but also the conversations we can be having. And they've been related because the most important element for verbal development in young children is an older person talking to them a lot, one to one. That's the thing that teaches them verbal skills hands down. Nothing on the screen is ever going to do that as well. And this is one of the things that I'm really just beginning to see come out of the corner of my eye is how much of a gradient we're on in terms of this very formulaic play, very formulaic way. And a lot of the young parents have been trapped into thinking that somebody else knows better than they do about parenting, that they have to learn how to be with their child from somebody else. And of course we do. We have to avail ourselves of the resources that are there. But at the end of the day, what I'm finding is this, it's not exactly testivity, but a feeling of lack of empowerment, or a word I don't know, I'm not very fond of, but there's this empowering we do of the parent to really say, I am the best person, and I'm what I use the parent to mean the adults in the household and doesn't necessarily have to be the biological parent, obviously. I do know, I do have resources of my own. And my being with my child and talking to him about my day, showing the pictures of my family and talking about my family, it's actually better than something that costs 29.95, you know, some video. It actually is better. That is a revolutionary talk to a lot of people. Well, Mary, you've talked about this wealth of experience you have and this work that you've been doing. Of course, this is spirit and action. You're my guest for spirit and action today. What are the spiritual levels, the motivations and the supports that help you do this work that motivated you to do it? How did you get involved in this so strongly? Clearly you're passionate about it. I'll tell you a story. My younger daughter, the ten years as I said between my two daughters, my younger daughter was six years old, and I had been really noticing the fact that we didn't have a television when my older daughter was very young, and nobody even knew it. Certainly not a topic of conversation. But with my younger daughter, it was the thing people obsessed about was that we did not have a television. It was like a radical act to not have a television. I was wondering what had happened in those ten years, and finding that I couldn't find underwear that didn't have a logo on that, you know, there was just all these logos everywhere. So I had become kind of aware, just my own experience, about the fact that media had taken a bigger place than it had had ten years prior, and we were at this birthday party. This is one of these pivotal moment stories. I didn't go into the birthday party. I was reading a book, and it was a book about education, I think. And it was a plate glass window. So I could see what was going on in the party, but I wasn't inside. It was a big indoor entertainment space in Brooklyn, and it was a power ranger party. And these two huge power rangers that dealt dressed up like power rangers were in this very pretty small room with these kids. And over here in the corner is a little birthday girl dressed in a tutu, you know, she's like a little ballerina. And these big power rangers getting the parents to stand up and do things, and the kids have plastic power rangers. And I just looked at them and thought, what is going on here? And then my daughter came out in tears because she couldn't get the favors, because the only way you could get the favors was to answer questions about the power rangers. And she didn't, of course, never seen them. So, of course, I negotiated with the power rangers for her favors. And we went over with the tickets for the favors, and it was just a discount to buy more power rangers stuff. So I thought, whoa, what is going on? And right at that moment, there was this space that had just opened up in the whole base, and we owned a house in Brooklyn at the time, in the whole basement of the house. And I just went down there for three months. I was like, Dean, I don't know what happened to people, and I cleaned up space and created this Children's Center. Now, why was I so riveted? It had come on fairly slowly. I had been studying the works of GI Good Eve, who talks about impressions as food. And so I was seeing something very directly about how these impressions of this violence was like a direct food for these children. We were beginning to be very influenced by, I was not a Quaker at that time, but we were beginning to be very influenced by Quaker Thod. My husband and I had been going to the Quaker meeting, and we were very struck by the testimony of simplicity and peace. And so all of these ideas were cooking in me, and it was just this moment of absolute clarity, and I can honestly say it was the clearest I've ever been about anything in my life. But this is what I needed to do, to do this Children's Center. And the Children's Center lasted for about nine years on craft, you know, clay, sewing, you name it. We did it at a lot of theater, which was, you know, my drama therapy came into the theater part. So I would say that looking back, I had been doing a lot of storytelling, and I had done the drama therapy. Everything had kind of been orienting me in this direction, but it was only when I really saw it so vividly. And then, of course, I started doing research, and then the parents came with their questions, and there was another moment in terms of the nonprofit. That was what started the Children's Center. In terms of the nonprofit, I would say this is probably seven years to show you into the Children's Center. We were making bread. One of my moms was making bread with small children, and we were all sitting around with our piece of bread, and I had shown everybody how to knead. And it was probably about 45 seconds with absolute silence, and all of these kids were kneading their bread. And I looked up and I thought, wow, you know, this is why I was born. You know, this is so great. We're being so attentive to their work, and it's very quiet, and I just thought, wow. And this little girl who had just turned three looked up at me and said, the Lion King video is too loud. So, well, you know, of course, it was not even a television in a place, but, you know, we were on a street corner in Brooklyn, and I thought somebody had the CD in their car. And the lift, he ordered some piece of stuff, and I said, you know, I don't hear it. And she said, it's in my head. That was another moment of absolute clarity. It was so clear that she had presented exactly, for me, what the essential question is. If she was trying to knead her bread, and the Lion King video was too loud in her mind, she was being overwhelmed by these images. So, I would say, in terms of the spiritual part, for many years, I did study and have studied the work of Geauga Chief, which has a lot to do with attention, has a lot to do with impressions of food, but also then the Quaker aspect coming in and seeing the implications, I think, what the implications are for everyday life. For simple life, for an unviolent life, you can hardly expect our children to learn to live peacefully when they're being taught over and over again. The violence is a way to solve conflict. So, it really goes, for me, to a place of spiritual, a question of spiritual development. And that's why I've agreed to take on, to facilitate, the belief community, and, for once, for a better term, I'm saying belief community, but it's humanist. It's not just faith communities, it's humanist, peace communities aspect of the campaign for commercial free childhood of their work. Because even though there are people, there are this spotty activity among the belief communities in relation to this, by and large, there hasn't been very much, it's been articulated through those communities, into a larger society, about what the concerns are. And so, we're trying to provide a vehicle for that conversation to happen about what we're seeing with our children, in terms of their spiritual development, their ability to be quiet, their ability to come into themselves. And we all find that a lifelong challenge, really, to come out of our busy lives and be quiet, be still, and to listen for our own voice. And those of us who really have had a tremendous amount of advantage in terms of having situations that encourage that find a difficult to imagine. Children who never have that in their lives, what are they going to be able to bring? And it's a real question, maybe they do bring a lot more than we see. It's possible that isn't what the anecdotal evidence is presenting. What we're hearing from teachers, from parents, is that children are constantly expecting stimulation from the outside. They're constantly expecting to be entertained, and not necessarily to entertain, but to be entertained. So, there's huge questions, and I'm not saying we have the answers, but we have the questions, and we need to share those questions. And I have found that in many religious societies and the belief communities, there's a tendency to think, well, we just don't go there. We either have sanitized media, or we can troll it. Of course, a lot of people say my kids only watch PBS, which is, I'm sorry to say, not a good idea anymore, because PBS has become the conduit for a lot of commercial media for young children. You know, people think of themselves as restricting things without actually going through the process of seeing what they really want the home environment to be, how it can be enriched for everyone, but particularly the needs of that young child. Well, so much going on. There's one more thing I wanted to ask you about. I noticed on your website, on the HealthyMediaTraces.org website, that you are clerk of New York Yearly Meetings Task Group on Youth. Now, some people might think that that's the Sunday school group, but I don't think that's what it's about. What is that group about, and what's your role in that? Clerk is simply chief servant, you know, but your mistress might not. It's a person who brings people together around something. And the Task Group on Youth in New York Yearly Meeting does incorporate religious education, which is first-day school, is our religious education vehicle, because New York Yearly Meeting just kind of dissolves all of the religious education for young people a few years ago. It was not working, and so it was what we call laid-down. Laying something like religious education is a rather major event. What we call monthly meetings, which is the meetings that happen weekly in the various locations, still have first-day schools, still have religious education going on. But in terms of any kind of coordination and kind of resources coming from the New York Yearly Meeting, which is the overarching umbrella organization for New York, parts of Connecticut and parts of New Jersey, that wasn't happening. And so people started talking to each other about what was needed and how something could be resurrected. And so the Task Group on Youth in the Task Group is a little bit like a committee accepted. It's a, by definition, a temporary organization that had a three-year charge, which is up in the summer of 2009, to look at the situation and make a recommendation for how to go forward, what was needed. And so for two and a half years, we've been using every vehicle-knowned modern man to plumb the depths of what the questions are about youth work, and what the resources are, what works, what does them geographically, obviously, are very specific challenges. It's just a geography. It's a very widespread yearly meeting. But we've just made our recommendations past weekend, and it was basically re-estuting the religious education, and kind of reconfiguring all of the youth work to come under one committee, to come under one organ, and each piece still maintains its integrity. But I would say that, aside from the kind of organizational aspect, the really big thing we came to, which is very difficult to embody, you know, what we're trying, we're hoping to make part of this sort of DNA of this new committee, is the fact that instead of looking at ourselves as a community across a spectrum of age, which is one of the realities, obviously, but rather that we try to look at each other as being here in this moment together and bringing all of our gifts and concerns together in this moment, and not making age so much of a defining and, in a way, dividing factor in terms of the way that we work, the way that we communicate. And that's a huge, we're talking about a seismic shift in the way, you know, we're questioning whether first-day school usually happens during meeting for worship, meaning for worship we are silent meetings, by and large in New York, the only meeting although there are some program meetings. And so the first-day school happens during the meeting, and then either the 15 minutes at the beginning or the end, the children come in and join the meeting. And that form is being questioned with a possibility of religious education happening all of it, adult and children at one time, and worship happening for everyone at the same time, and it being a parallel meeting to the meaningful worship that would be meaningful worship with families. So you would know, if you go to that meeting for worship, there's going to be children there. And one of the underlying things there is to get back a little bit to what we're talking about with the whole question of the place of media, the kind of central place that has in some of your lives. And that is, where do our children have the possibility of being still? If they come into meeting for 15 minutes, then they go out into their own meeting. They have a little bit of quiet time to hear a story, to draw a picture. Where do they have the opportunity for their stillness to be extended for them to be called into a longer attention? Might not have been as necessary in the time when there weren't so many distractions in the rest of life. We're reading, you know, maybe with the biggest distraction from going out and playing. And people went out and played. Now, we really have to think about where our children are being offered, any opportunity to be quiet for an extended period of time and to experience worship. And we have a wonderful youth program at Powerhouse, which is the New York Yell meetings retreat center, where there are powerful experiences of worship, but not all children from the entire Yell meeting can get to Powerhouse. And, you know, it really isn't even appropriate to confine it to a retreat situation. We really need it to be on the local level. So it's really, I would say, we're looking at 10 years of trying to move something that has become a lot of love, a lot of care for the young people. But there's been very much parallel track. And what we're trying to do is bring everyone into the moment so to speak together in worship and in the life of the meeting. People say, "Well, we lose our young people when they go to college. We don't lose them when they go to high school. They just happen to live at home." And the point is to keep them or lose them, but rather to have them feel a sense of ownership of their worship space and their worship experience. So if they find it's something that suits them that is somewhere else fine, but at least they have an experience to build from, they would give them some sense of what they're looking for. Well, thank you for your service with the Task Group on Youth for New York Yell meeting. You've been serving in so many ways, including your radio program, How are the Children, and that broadcasts on Brattleboro Community Radio, which is W-V-E-W. That's a 107.7 L-P in Brattleboro, Vermont. I thank you for your service with healthy media choices, all the workshops that all the parents you've spoken to. You made the world a better place. I want to thank you for that, Mary. Well, it's all on the job training, Mark. And I have to say that I feel very blessed that in my 60s, I feel I have something that I will do for the rest of my life quite joyfully and learn every day something new about it. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If anyone from your neck of the woods wants to listen in to How are the Children at one o'clock Eastern time on Tuesday, this program does stream at W-V-E-W.org. Well, thank you for joining us, and hopefully people will be joining in at W-V-E-W.org. You said what time on Tuesdays? It's one o'clock Eastern time. One o'clock Eastern time on W-V-E-W.org. You can hear How are the Children by Mary Rothschild, who has been my guest for today's Spirit in Action. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Mark. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.