“There’s a hundred and four days of summer vacation, and school comes along just to end it. So the annual problem for our generation is findin’ a good way to spend it…”
If you just read that first line and had a triangular-headed boy and his green-haired step-brother pop to mind, then you probably have kids in your house. Of course, I’m talking about Phineas and Ferb. A cartoon which I was completely biased against based solely on the name. Now, I try not to miss an episode of it when the kids have it on. Those guys are hilarious, and were it not for their tattle-tale sister, it would be the perfect cartoon.
At least much better than some of the other fare that is offered today. Once you stray away from Noggin, PBS, or Nick Jr. you’re opening yourself up for some questionable stuff. I won’t even go as far to say that the aforementioned channels get it right a hundred percent of the time. It’s not uncommon for the more modern “toons” to have improper or rude dialogue, realistic violence, or even themes with adult issues.
When I was a kid, about the worst you had on T.V. was Tom and Jerry beating the snot out of each other for thirty minutes. Oh, and Wile E. Coyote somehow escaping the certain doom that he constantly inflicted on himself. As ill-advised is it may have been, you could let a kid sit in front of the television for the entire Saturday morning, and never worry about what they were going to see. Even the Transformers, for all their robot-to-robot action, never killed a person during their conflicts. I’d even go as far to say that I never remember a single G.I. Joe dying, and that was a military cartoon for crying out loud!
Somewhere, somehow, that has all changed. You might say that we’re overprotective parents, but we won’t let our kids watch a new cartoon series until we preview a few episodes first. I know there comes a time when you have to let go and let the kids get used to some of the themes presented, but when a mean character on a Thomas the Train movie still scares the boy at night, he’s just not ready for that sort of thing. Believe me, I can’t wait to watch The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings with my oldest boy, but those days are still a ways off. The White Witch will be a big enough hurdle. I don’t even want to imagine what it will be like with the Ring Wraiths.
And as much as he enjoys the cartoon Transformers series, it’s infuriating that he won’t be able to watch the Transformers movie until he’s like…thirty years old. I’m sorry, but we could have had a perfectly good movie without the whole Megan Fox story arc.
Don’t delude yourself into thinking what kids see and hear on T.V. doesn’t have an effect on their attitudes and actions. It’s as direct a correlation as sunlight to flower growth. One year, I bought my dad some DVDs of Sugar Ray Leonard boxing matches for Christmas. That night we popped one in to watch an old match, and in the midst of it my son toddled over to me and put the smack down on my face. How could I blame him for slapping me in the eye, when that was exactly what we were watching on the big screen?
In the end, I think it’s up to us as parents to filter the things that our kids see and hear coming in over the cable. We’ll either take that responsibility seriously, to our benefit, or reap the consequences to our own detriment.
And, in conclusion, I have only one thing to say. Hey! Where’s Perry?
I was talking with a teacher at Alex's school this week and she was making the comment that it gets worse each year with the way the students speak to the teachers and their actions to fellow students. We were discussing how TV has played a direct role in the decline. Kids see kids on TV and cartoon characters speaking to one another with such disrespect and then think it is okay to speak to parents, siblings, friends, teachers, etc. the same way. It IS up to us, the parents, to filter what goes into our children's minds and hearts just like we control what goes into their stomach. Junk in - Junk Out. Good things in - healthy growth. Thanks for posting.
ReplyDelete