War of the buttons

ON THE worst days, it feels like a re-run of one of Eastenders' more violent episodes, as muffled shouts of "Shut it!" are followed by distant thuds. An all-too brief lull in the noise is followed by the sound of someone channel-surfing at top volume, triumphant at having gained possession, however temporary, of the TV's remote control.

If you find you're more worried about the violence in front of the TV than on the TV, what to do? Children will fight over almost anything, but fights over who gets to watch what on TV belong in a battleground all their own.

If you have children of all ages and both sexes and, like many Irish households, 12 channels and two TVs, the scope for disagreement is exceptional, as battles flare over who gets to watch the match, Home and Away, Star Trek and yes, Eastenders. Or who gets to play Nintendo.

You might think that getting another TV would ease the problem: instead, it seems to increase the rows exponentially. Now tempers erupt over who gets to watch their programme in the most comfortable room.

And even if they're not fighting with each other, many kids will fight with you when you want to switch from Nintendo to news, soap to documentary.

Brid, a Dublin mother of four, isn't the only parent who'll give in and watch telly in the kitchen rather than provoke a row: "And even when I'm there and have the TV on while I'm working, I'll get distracted and find that one of them has wandered in and changed the channel. I don't get to see what I want."

Her three daughters are close in age, and have similar TV tastes; if they fight, it's usually Nintendo v TV. And they've given up fighting with their little brother over his few favourite programmes: "Peter has his own ideas, and they may shut up and let him watch Power Rangers."

Occasionally a parent, usually a dad, flips when the children start to whine just because he wants to watch Inspector Morse or a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the Gulf War: he throws the head and everybody out of the TV room and the house fills with sullen silence.

This is no way to live.

But there is a better way, according to Marie Murray, senior clinical psychologist at St Vincent's Psychiatric Hospital in Dublin. Indeed, although she has trenchant things to say about how families should control television, she has been researching "telly therapy" with adolescents for a number of years, using videos and TV programmes to help them release and reflect on their own emotions. TV can be a wonderful medium, and families should co-ordinate their activities around it to use it in a positive way.

She agrees that the family TV (or TVs - 29 per cent of Irish households now have at least two televisions) can often be a focal point for major aggro. But parents shouldn't let the rows drift on. "Usually, they're resolved by someone storming in angrily and switching the set off, which ends up being unfair to somebody, perhaps a teenager who has been studying hard and deserves an hour or so of relaxation."

At other times, rows are resolved by letting a more aggressive child - "the one you know will have a tantrum and make everyone else's life miserable" - get their way over a more compliant child, just for the sake of peace. Both of these methods reinforce the message that you would object to in a TV show, that might is right.

It's hard not to be sympathetic to the parents Murray encountered recently who had bought each of their four children, aged nine to 16, a TV for their rooms: they said they could afford it, and the peace and freedom from stress and disputes was well worth it.

As far as Murray is concerned, this is definitely the wrong answer, even though nowadays, given the cheapness of TVs, it might well be affordable. "My feeling is that there is no way of monitoring what's watched, and parents really do need to monitor and discuss with children what they watch. And it can cut children, and that would include teenagers, off from socialising."

And quite apart from that, she adds "it means you're missing a wonderful opportunity as a family to learn how to negotiate solutions, to share out a limited resource".

Okay, so up to now your children have adopted a Bosnian-Serb model for conflict resolution but there is always the possibility for change and, if Murray is right, solving the TV row through a democratic family forum will have more than one good effect.

"In an ideal world, we'd use the medium by anticipating who likes what programme and then we'd schedule it." Everyone would get to watch just a few of their own favourite programmes every day, "and if allowed less viewing, it would be valued more".

Murray believes strongly that our remote-control culture, in which TV is switched on as a wallpaper background to everyday life, is bad news; she isn't convinced by arguments that suggest it's simply a whole new culture that people over a certain age can't understand, the culture that spawned The Big Breakfast, Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, and in Ireland, Nighthawks.

"I know children who can watch two programmes at once, and channel surf through 10 stations in the break, I've watched them do it. And it means they don't really concentrate, don't focus on the meaning of the programmes they watch, don't reflect on what's happening."

Children aged seven to 12 are generally the most avid TV viewers "and young children do interpret the world through what they see on TV. They think that what they see is real, that what happens in Home and Away is real life. And you really do need to watch with them, you need an adult voice saying `What do you think of that person stomping out?' or even `wasn't that a nice thing she did?' It's crucial that they reflect, and with your help, interpret what's going on."

I tried it. I really did. How did I know it was going to turn out like one of those sessions of Questions & Answers where the whole panel turns savage on John Bowman? Stay tuned for further updates.