I have never thought of myself as particularly prudish when it came to TV. Growing up I didn’t understand why other kids weren’t allowed to watch Sabrina just because she was a teenage witch or how Power Rangers incited violence.
Personally I could always draw a line between reality and make believe so it was not likely that I would dress up in pink and try to defend my neighbourhood or ask for a black cat to help me with my magic tricks.
I was never into soap operas (I’m still not) so my parents never told me to turn away during a kissing scene as I’ve seen other parents do (this would make most kids more curious actually-just saying) My parents never had to stop me from watching age inappropriate movies because I was a bit of a goody- two-shoes so wouldn’t watch anything I was not old enough for anyway and since I only like comedy movies it was not like I was dying to see Nightmare on Elm Street, Chucky or even Die Hard for that matter.
Okay so what is my point?
I always thought that people gave TV too much credit, blaming it for children’s behaviour and I certainly never thought I’d be the type to mollycoddle my kids. But this past weekend with Aidan being sick I saw a different side of myself. I brought some toys onto my bed and wanted to put on the TV to distract him from the pain and OMW was choosing something to watch that tough.
At the risk of sounding like a 60’s housewife, ” Kids are just so impressionable!” and I never realised how much “adult themes” there were in the series I watch.
I’m not even into the vampirey, zombieish things, I watch Glee and Big Bang Theory for goodness sake. But yes there are bedroom scenes aplenty.
Nothing hectic though, nothing like almost every movie I tried, so many cuss words and nudity and those are just the family rated ones…Watching things like that with my kid is almost as awkward as discovering that “interesting” sex scene in Good Luck Chuck with your parents (which I did, the joys).
Aidan has a collection of kiddies movies so I thought I would look into that, but in my already hypersensitive state, I realised that there is a lot of death and loss in these movies and a surprising amount of fighting. I settled on Monsters Inc, at least no one died (Nemo, Bambi,Up,Frozen)
Aidan loved it, he roared with the monsters, tried to offer Boo his bottle when she cried and then shouted no no no at the screen when a fight broke out.
The no no no response startled me and I asked if the monsters were naughty for fighting to which he responded “Don’t fight”
I realised something there, You can’t protect your kids from the world, you can only equip them for it.
I mean Tigger from Winnie the Pooh actually promotes jumping off things and he is in one of the “safest” kids shows. Jake from Jake and the Neverland Piratescarries a sword! Handy Manny plays with tools and Dora the Explorer wanders off by herself….
If I’m going to be overprotective I should just not let him watch TV ever (not that he has the attention span to watch more than 5 minutes now anyway) and also I think I could edit some nursery rhymes… I don’t think that Jack and Jill should fall down the hill and Georgie Porgie is highly inappropriate kissing girls and what not….
But in all seriousness he is growing up in the real world and will be exposed to lots of things in lots of ways… No it’s not about to be a free for all in the TV department I just think I want to be less neurotic about things…I have told Aidan countless times that it is wrong to fight I just never realised that it had sunk in (as he loves to rough house)…but apparently he knows “Don’t fight” which makes me think that as long as I explain things to him while we watch TV, things should be okay…. But seriously shouldn’t someone be supervising Dora, hehehe
