A few weeks ago we took our kids to see the movie, The Spiderwick Chronicles. It was a little scarier than I was expecting and my five year old son quickly found his way to dad’s lap during some of the more intense scenes, but overall it was a fun movie that we all enjoyed. There are many things that come to mind about concepts shared in the film and real life experiences I can relate them to. Maybe I’ll write more about some of those later, but for today I wanted to share the one about protective barriers.

One of the concepts from the movie that has helped me a great deal recently as a parent is the concept of the protective circle. In the movie, there is a spell used that results in a circle of magical toadstools around the house. This creates an invisible shield preventing any of the unwanted and unkind magical creatures from entering the home. In short, it keeps the contents and inhabitants of the home safe from harm. For the majority of the movie this circle is able to perform its job flawlessly but toward the end the adversary finds a way to break the spell and penetrate the circle.

I loved being able to use this visual with teaching my children the importance of creating and maintaining protective circles for our family. I shared how every day they go out into the world and are assailed by a myriad of dangers - most of which they cannot see. Yet even though they go unseen they are very real and can do much harm if allowed. My kids seemed to really like this idea of a protective circle around our home keeping them safe and providing them security. But what I appreciated most was using this analogy to help them see the reasons for some of our recent parenting decisions, especially that of turning off the television several months ago. Up to this point it was hard for them to understand that it wasn’t a punishment, try as we might they still felt utterly deprived and couldn’t comprehend why we didn’t want it in our home anymore. I can’t blame them because we were careful about what we watched on T.V. even when we had it and none of us watched it a lot, so it’s not like they could immediately associate bad influences or feelings from it. But when I told them that what I’ve noticed so much since we removed it is how it was like a door or window in our protective circle, that it presented an invitation to the evils and dangers of the outside world into our home - our very own living room - they seemed to catch a glimmer of the concept. I told them the biggest danger is how subtle it really is because I didn’t clearly see or recognize it until it was no longer there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that T.V. is evil and we should all ban it, but I am acknowledging the influence it has on us as well as the use of our time. I’m trying so hard to teach my kids the kinds of values and morals that I feel are important: modesty, morality, honesty, kindness, gratitude, and work to name a few. It’s a daunting task as I’m still working on all of these traits myself! Yet, if you look at just those I listed you quickly see how the majority of all programming counters every single one at various levels constantly displaying images, stories, action and drama of their opposites and at the very least takes claim to the time we might spend working on other things. I don’t need that kind of help. The danger with this device is how gloriously subtle and addicting it is. The beauty is how one simple decision could have such a powerful and positive impact on our family. We still have plenty of influences in our home, in fact my daughter still watches the occasional show of her favorite Disney series online, we still have movies and video games and we obviously still go to the movies but by removing the constant presence of the T.V. we strengthened our family’s protective circle. Who knew?

There are countless other protective circles and security measures we as parents need to address today. What are some of the ones you’re working on?

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