In the rather optimistically titled Making the “Terrible” Twos Terrific! (1993), child psychologist John Rosemond wrote,
But later a cruel reality sets in. Inevitably it dawns upon the child that he is not at the center of the universe after all. His parents are not always at his beck and call. The resulting frustration then leads to whining, tears, and full-blown tantrums, making the “terrible” twos horrific. (Rosemond does offer prescriptions, but I can’t tell you what they are since in all honesty I haven’t read the book—just that excerpt, which my wife read aloud to me the other night.)
I may be unusual in this, but I actually remember the moment when the realization that I wasn’t the center of the universe occurred to me, around the age of three or four. I was watching a rerun of The Brady Bunch on our wood-paneled Zenith (this was in the 1970s) when I decided to turn the set off. Then a little later I switched it on, only to discover the program was no longer the same—this was back when you had to get up from the couch and turn a dial. To my surprise, the episode did not pick up where I had left it off. (How on earth did Bobby and Cindy manage to find their way out of the Grand Canyon with nothing but a flashlight filled with baked beans?)
Back then, if you missed your show, you missed your show. But this all changed with the advent of the videocassette recorder. Suddenly you could enjoy going out on a Friday night without worrying about missing The Dukes of Hazzard. Then came TiVo in 1999, followed by a series of other digital video recorders. There is no longer any need for those stacks of cassette tapes. Your digital television box now serves as a computer, storing loads of information in its hard drive, recording multiple shows with the greatest of ease. Not only that, but while watching television, if you happen to miss a vital clue on CSI or the possibility that January Jones had a brief wardrobe malfunction, you can instantly hit the rewind button and replay the interesting moment (or, ahem, pause it).
All this has implications. When my two-year-old son is watching, say, Jack’s Big Music Show and wants to see the puppet band perform the same number again and again, conceivably, he can. At night, if he feels like watching a morning program, this too is possible. In other words, he can still think of himself as being at the center of the universe, at least when it comes to seeing what he wants on television, when he wants it.
Except that my wife and I have decided not to put the DVR at our son’s disposal. “Can I see that train again?” is met with the response, “No, the train is gone,” or, “Sorry, we don’t control these things.” When he asks, “Can I watch Blue’s Clues?” we reply, “No, that show is on in the morning, and it’s night time now.” Slowly but surely, our son has come to accept that he does not command all things. Just his baby sister.
Of course these are merely delaying tactics. Eventually technology will gain the upper hand. It always does. In fact, we’ve become so accustomed to instant gratification, whether it be On Demand television programming or downloaded music from iTunes, it’s as if we’ve turned into overgrown versions of the babies John Rosemond described.
But so it goes. The children will no doubt brush off my warnings about the socially decaying effects of technology. Their eyes will roll when I tell them about the olden days when we used to have to get up from the couch to change channels—all 12 of them—and had no call-waiting on our telephone. (On a sidenote, my parents to this day do not have call-waiting. Their main telephone, a wall-mounted multi-line Western Electric model 2851, is a collector’s item. Somebody please collect it.)
A few years ago, a friend of mine told me about the time he was playing with his daughter who had a toy cell phone. She pretended to take a picture with it. “Now, Caroline,” he reminded her, “you know that’s a phone, not a camera.” His wife replied, “Well, actually … ”
Victorino Matus
