MotherSoup

Here’s a secret: I’m still easily scared by programmes like Doctor Who. That’s one of the reasons why, if I watch it at a weekend, I always make a point to try and catch (or video) the ‘Doctor Who Confidential’ programme which follows on BBC3. That way I get to see all the monsters with their stuffing hanging out, the scary scenes… but with the cameramen and choreographers standing round the edge, and the messily-murdered actors chatting happily about what fun it was to die. Defuses the effect.

I also get to see people like Producer Russell T. Davies and Producer-in-waiting Steven Moffat talking with positivity and enthusiasm about their work. Hearing anybody talk with such passion about their subject is almost always inspiring, and this week both men dwelt on how they imagined that a storyline would be recreated in playgrounds around the country.

Sure enough, I do see kids trotting up to school with bits of Doctor Who monster costumes liberally  - if erratically - applied to their faces and torsos. I have an Offspring who I consider to be too young to cope with Doctor Who - and many of these costumed children are younger than my Offspring. So: am I an over-sensitive mother or do I have an over-sensitive child? Or are some of those other children over-exposed, and their parents shockingly neglectful? None of these, of course, or maybe a little bit of all of them: what pejorative adjectives those all are!

This is an Offspring who has (so far) tended to watch less telly and read more books. Would there be less sensitivity in that offspring if the TV had been on every waking moment since their birth? I’m pretty certain heavy exposure would desensitive anybody… Like me* this Offspring needs reminders that what happens in on-screen dramas isn’t real, or imagination runs away with us both. And we need to remember that the characters in them aren’t real either, because imagination and empathy go hand-in-hand. What is at the core of empathy but imagining what things feel like to somebody else?

If my Offspring would struggle to cope with Doctor Who because of high imagination/empathy levels, what might that say for some of the masked kids at school? I guess they’re well-grounded in the idea that telly isn’t real, but are they going to struggle with real-life empathy as well? If some kids who watch more telly have a well-developed sense of the unreal is there a chance that some - some - will not develop a sense of reality that they can apply to the world and the people outside the goggle-box?

That same Saturday, a few hours before Doctor Who was broadcast, our sunny afternoon in the garden (watching the swallows) was shaken by some astonishingly loud and thumping bass-heavy music pumped out by neighbours in an adjoining street. Loud enough to hear the words of the songs, but too loud to hear yourself think. I find it so hard to understand how anyone can do that (for hours - not just cranking up a favourite track) without a sense of how it may affect others. No empathy.

I suppose the natural conclusion from the collision of these two thought paths is: does lots of television, generally considered to inhibit imaginative processes, also inhibit the crucial, fundamental, early development of empathy?

Well, at least those younger kids I see at school are clearly indulging in buckets of imaginative play - looks like there’s a good chance they’re finding their own ways to learn about the world. And my Offspring? A few minutes of Spongebob Squarepants at a friend’s house still seems to be a bit much for them, but I actually do look forward to the days when we can enjoy some cracking telly together - from behind the sofa, of course…

*yes, maybe it’s been picked up off me.