Children's Health: That Tiyanak in Your Home

CEBU, Philippines - All this time that tiyanak, changeling, demon that you fear so much in horror movies and fiction maybe more real than you think. It could be the tiyanak is that toddler, little child in your home. You are the maker of your own evil. You breed and rear your own demon. When you dress a child like Satan, when you put horns on his head, when you put blood on his skin even though it is make-up, you are in many ways making a changeling, a demon with your little child.

Children’s mental, emotional and spiritual health seems to be ignored these days that Masbate Bishop Joel Baylon couldn’t help but rebuke at how Satan and the realities of evil is being trivialized in the lives of children by making them dress like little devils complete with horns, skull-like face masks, anything that would make them look like demons. For how can Christians and Roman Catholics of this country say they fear God when they glamorize demons in their own children?

Even if you say it was just for fun, it was no fun at all. There is incongruity and even insanity when you say “Happy Halloween” because how can you be happy when Halloween is always associated with something scary? What we may not realize is that we may be celebrating Halloween or trivializing the evil realities of the world everyday because we expose children to television.

Piercing realization.

Research and studies have frequently reiterated that exposing children to television makes tiyanaks out of an innocent child. But still many parents, guardians, yayas and siblings never care much that their children are watching inane noontime shows. Even if you are making them watch animated movies Kung Fu Panda or Ice Age, themes of violence invade the story. There is nothing innocent about cartoons like Tom and Jerry or Tweety Bird because of how violence is being trivialized, sanitized and sometimes glamorized in these animated medium.

Genres of glamour in killing is emphasized in a bird holding a gun. Only when a child starts throwing a knife at you or a four-year-old girl shoots her elder brother or when siblings stab each other is there piercing realization of the detrimental effects of television on children’s growth. It is the violent themes in television that brings out and breaks loose the demons in children.

If your child whom you dressed like a little satan actually changes into a demon and strangles you, would you kill your own child? Dressing up children into devils, instills the value of evil to them during a tender age.

Devil's advocate.

All religions confirm that there is a demon and demons are real. The contemporary Roman Catholic Church unequivocally teaches that demons are real personal beings, not just symbolic devices. In fact, the Catholic Church has a cadre of officially sanctioned exorcists who are supposed to ward off the demons. The exorcists of the Catholic Church teach that demons attack humans continually but the afflicted persons can be healed and protected by exorcism. Just to play the devil’s advocate, can a man or a child exorcised of the demon inside him be completely ensured that he will no longer be attacked by evil influences when he continues to be exposed to demonic themes on television and to other wicked environs of his everyday life?

Just making children watch noontime shows already instills in them decadence and immorality. And it doesn’t scare parents how these seemingly hilarious noontime shows can make tiyanaks out of their children.

It is senseless to deny the all embracing negative effects television has brought to our lives. At a time of peace, civilizations are shattered by armed violence in homes, schools and even churches and partly to blame is television. We don’t seem to be bothered by how television turns our lives into a nightmare by the demonic ways it influences our children. Children learn moral principles from television where by the age of 16 they would have watched 100,000 violent acts and 33,000 murders. Millions of children spend an average of 20 or more hours per week watching television and this cumulative exposure to violent images shape young minds in unhealthy and lethal ways. If that is not enough to harm a child’s psyche, then that child will probably look for ways to harm you.

It is equally senseless to deny that violence is a central aspect of television programming that enjoys remarkable consistency and stability over time. Anything violent or sexual gets high commercial rating and high advertising revenues. Because of this, television scales up aggression especially so that television glamorizes violence and killings.

More than a third of all violence is committed by attractive characters and more than two-thirds of the violence they commit are done without signs of punishment, remorse or criticism. It comes as no surprise that children enjoy becoming terminators where killing becomes an ordinary of interaction alongside with anger.

If you want to exorcise your home from tiyanaks, turn off the TV. Don’t put headband horns on your little girl or boy because they weren’t born with horns. Unless you want Satan in your home, then you don't have to dress up or wear make up for Halloween, your little toddler could be your biggest BOO.