Okay, Well, I Lied. We DO Watch TV.

My son has a speech delay. He does communicate with me, and he absolutely knows his words—he knows his alphabet and we are learning to count. He can identify every single item in our house; he just can't always say the names out loud. But then there is the television. Take Jurassic World. There is a scene where Owen Grady trains his raptors in the pit. He throws them treats—not catnip, mind you, but dead rats and other things that are apparently yummy in a raptor's tummy. My son is three years old, and when he watches this, he is suddenly no longer just my son. He is Owen Grady. He throws a pretend rat, runs across the room, and instantly transforms into the raptor eating it. He rubs his stomach, says "yum yum," and then flips right back into Owen. His little hand goes up in a "hold" position. He waits for it... a little longer... and then, playing Owen, he says, "GO!" His hand drops, we high-five, and we have officially had a successful raptor training day. He watches Tom and Jerry, too. When he plays Tom, he falls down and yells, "OUCH!" because Jerry always manages to outsmart him. He will grab my cardigan, stuff it into the refrigerator—mimicking the scene where Jerry traps Tom's tail in the fridge door—and look at me. Now I have to be Tom, yelling, "OUCH!" The next second, he is Jerry. He runs around the corner to the other side of the room, puts his hands on his knees, and huffs and puffs with the sheer relief of safety. Wiping imaginary sweat from his forehead, he lets out a breathless, "Phew!" Then there is The Wild Robot. From the first scene to the last, he is completely locked in. He sneezes right after the baby otter does. He brings his fingers together like a crab and "crawls" them up the wall to safety. When Roz bumps her head on a tree branch, he gasps, "OH!" When the animals initially reject her and her mechanical head sinks in disappointment, he cries out a pitiful, "Awww." When she falls, he falls. When she stands back up—one metal arm at a time out in front of her—he pushes himself up the exact same way. When the butterflies burst from the tree, his eyes widen and he whispers, "Wooww." When Fink the fox growls, my son growls back. And when Brightbill finally hatches from his egg and locks eyes with his robot mother, my son walks over, places his forehead gently against mine, and whispers, "Baby." Here is the thing: nobody has ever actually heard a real dinosaur "rawr" before, but for my son, his mom has. He didn't inherently know that Tom—a character in a silent cartoon—was yelling "ouch" when his tail got caught in the fridge, but his mom knew. He didn't know a sneeze was a sound he could physically make. He didn't know to "awe" at the beauty of butterflies, or that sadness had the sound of a pitiful, heavy sigh when Roz was knocked down. But I knew. And through the screen, he is seeing emotions. I am giving those emotions a soundtrack, and he is storing them away in his memory. He is learning patience before the raptors get their treat. He is learning the feeling of relief when you've managed to slip away from the cat chasing you. He is seeing the majesty in butterflies and the heavy ache of being completely alone. Through these stories, he is seeing, feeling, and acting out his emotions—one beautiful step at a time. And me? I get to sit back and watch him learn all of this. I get to watch the absolute beauty of him absorbing the world through gestures and sounds, and then physically bringing them to life. Because these lessons don't end when the credits roll. He takes them with him to the park, to his grandparents' house, to the beach, and out into the front yard. Everywhere we go, my son is expressing deep compassion, beauty, patience, and yes—frustration and anger, too. But he carries more genuine compassion in his little three-year-old body than most adults ever manage to find. Why? Because his mom is "terrible" and lets him watch TV.