I gave up on the no screens in the car during our last summer vacation. It's an issue that I find very conflicting. I dislike the zombie effect of small screens, but I'm addicted to the peace. I always thought we'd tell stories, listen to music, and play trivia games on road trips, but everyone is buried in their Nintendo DS or their ipods -- which I bought for them. 

However, more and more research suggests that limiting screen time for kids, especially those under five, is critical for their creative and social development. The onslaught of marketing prevalent in television, online, DVDs, video games, and cell phones promotes values and behaviors that... when I think about it, I really don't want in my house.

Did you know?

-- American companies spend about $17 billion annually marketing to children, an increase from the $100 million spent in 1983.

-- Children ages 2-11 see more than 25,000 advertisements a year on TV.

-- There are 40,000 Disney Princess items on the market today.

-- The average ten-year-old can recognize 4000 brands, but can't name ten types of trees at the park.

It's enough to make you want to ditch your cell phone and escape for a hike in the woods. It's not unique to the US either. The WHO in Europe has assembled a network urging companies to reduce marketing pressure on children. Stateside, organizations like the Coalition for a Commercial Free Childhood provides resources on how to reduce consumerism at home and ideas on how to help kids develop the skills and self-discipline to thrive in today's society.  Books like Consuming Kids and The Case for Make Believe illustrate how crucial play is for intellectual growth.  

Actually unplugging can be difficult. Everything that exposes my kids to advertising is also a tool that I use everyday, so it is going to take some serious discipline to put my phone down, close my laptop, walk away, and hide them all from the kids. But we should try it... when we can... unplug for a little while. Play tag, make playdough, stomp through a creek, throw snowballs. Maybe it will make us more creative moms too!

When my kids were little, there were a few children's TV shows I wouldn't let them watch. Barney and Elmo were irritating, and Caillou was a whiner. My kids were already experts at obnoxious and whiney, so I didn't figure they needed the encouragment. (My favorites were anything that had music and no talking, like old Looney Tunes.) As they got older, there was the constant question of how much media should they consume and what was appropriate content for books, computer games, etc.? There was also the inevitable exposure to more material at friends' houses who had older brothers or sisters.  

I was raised nearly media free -- without a TV until I was 12. We were allowed to listen to Gilbert and Sullivan and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and read just about what ever we could get our hands on. This made me the biggest loser in the fifth grade. I could sing the entire score from Oklahoma! but I had no idea what happened on Party of Five or The X-Files. Recently I found out that celebrities like Madonna and Roseanne don't let their kids watch TV or play computer games. To make up for my childhood, I'm letting my kids, who are all too young, create Facebook accounts with a few rules, like hand over your password and friend me or I'm deleting your account. And I've promised that I'll ask before I post anything about them, so it won't be embarrassing.

American moms feel pressured to be quite vigilant about what our kids read and watch, and with good reason. There's lots of garbage out there. However, no matter how much I feel like I should monitor absolutely everything to make sure it's Disney pristine, I can't. I'll monitor our computer network, limit screen time, and nix the really bad stuff, which is usually easy to spot.  

It was a French copy of Little Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge) from our au pair Lucie that helped me chill out. Instead of Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood getting rescued by the woodcutter, the story ends when they're eaten by the wolf! That's it! I was looking for the next page, but the book was over. Imagine that as a bedtime story!

However, when you think about it, this ending is actually a pretty good lesson for operating online today. Don't give information to strangers. Consider the source and don't believe everything you hear or read.  If something looks suspicious, get out of there. And getting rescued isn't a valid Plan B. 

So, now I'm off to read the other book Lucie sent us, Michka. The language is more complex, so it's going to take a while to plow through the French. Maybe that will teach me how French kids do chores and laundry so I can get my own to follow suit.

 My kids attended a camp a few summers ago, and I volunteered to help out with the international humanitarian project for the week. The leaders chose a children's home in Russia, and we would raise money to buy winter clothes for them for the coming year. My job was to spend about ten minutes a day teaching the campers about the children's home (we had some pictures) and Russia, even though my experience was limited to a semester of reading Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky in college.    

In the photos we had, some of the kids were not wearing shoes, so on Monday, I had a few campers come up front with me and sit with their feet in buckets of ice while I explained about Russian winters. They loved it. On Tuesday, we found out how much kids living on the street in Russia typically had to eat each day. I made up cold bowls of rice and asked for volunteers to chow down. American kids who refused to eat their vegetables had no trouble scarfing down plain rice (no salt, butter or sugar).

We knew that children's home was pretty crowded since they tried not to turn anyone away, so on Wednesday, I asked the campers who had their own rooms at home. Then I drew a "room" with tape on the stage, and the kids learned that eight of them would have to share that space.   They all thought it would be fun though, as long as everyone respected each other's stuff. Thursday, we learned a song in Russian -- I'm sure I butchered the lyrics -- and Friday, we just reviewed what we'd learned.  

The campers raised thousands of dollars that week, mostly because kids got excited about helping other kids.  It was amazing.  And I hope that enthusiasm is something they file away and remember.    

"Tell me a story..." my kids ask every night.

Sometimes I say, "Once upon a time, there were three children who were really tired, so their mother put them to bed and they went to sleep.  The end."  After some loud complaining, I'll tell them a story about when they were babies, or my childhood, or my grandma from Sweden or their grandparents from Scotland.  Even if they've heard it a hundred times, they don't get tired of it.  It anchors them, reminds them that people just a few years before them lived very different lives in far away places.

This week in Lahore, Pakistan, the country is hosting its first Children's Literature Festival.  It's a collaborative effort between international children's publishers and educational agencies aimed promoting literacy in Pakistani children.  Children from across the country are invited to listen to their favorite books, enter writing contests, take classes on creative writing, write book reviews, and draw comics.  Educators can attend training on curriculum development and lesson planning.

In a country where just 66% of children finish primary school, literacy rates for women are still less than 50%, and tribal and religious conflicts frequently disrupt schooling, this festival will help train teachers and underscore the importance of educating the next generation.

Education expert Dr. Arifa Syeda Zehra, said life would be colorless if there were no stories because we interpret our world through stories.  Everybody makes sense of things in their own way, but if you have stories, it helps.  And the bigger the collection of stories, the more tools you have to interpret your life.

I would agree.  My kids would agree.  And stories also make everything more fun!