My mother had comic books on her hitlist when I was even a little older than Bear, so I didn’t read them too much. But even some of the good ones gave me nightmares. This was way before color TV; I don’t know if we had a black and white one or not. So comics were the most extreme thing for kids at the time.
I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the best thing is to have TV, but in small doses, like dessert. It’s too important to modern society to ignore it completely. Just like wine, it’s good to help the child develop a sense of the TV as there, controllable, and a servant of the person.
The real issue, though, seems to be giving Bear points of contact with his fellow kids. Why can’t regular games and unicycling, etc, be those points? Soon he’ll be the most respected kid, since he will be the one with the most original life. Or not the most respected, but it won’t matter.
Don’t be fooled; all the kids know for sure that having the latest video game is just a matter of conning a rich parent into buying it. They all know it’s a cheap thing as far as personal oomph goes. And the friends that are only there for the game are cheap friends.
Sponge Bob is a great cartoon, a classic. It has a lot of charm and depth and humor, and is well done. It’s full of friends who bomb around together and put up with each other’s nonsense. It’s far better than most of the cartoons of my childhood. One vacation, my daughter and I watched an entire season of shows over a three day period. This was when she was about 11, so Bear just hasn’t come into his own, yet, or perhaps he got the opinion from someone at school. It was another good bonding time for us. It’s not good for the child to always have come to the parent’s space for bonding. Even with reading aloud, which we have done a lot, the child is always aware that the parent is giving, is in the superior position. I think it’s important for the parent to work hard to meet the child at his/her level as much as possible, since the parent is naturally way ahead when the child is born. With our Sponge Bob marathon, we were at the same level and could come together in the same space with neither superior or inferior. We still talk about episodes, or just that time.
And, of course, Sponge Bob is a unicyclist…
To me, Sponge Bob is one of those things that make TV worth it for children, not to mention the zillions of history, science, art, mechanical, and other shows.
The Harry Potter books were another chance for the two of us to experience a new thing as quasi-equals. I say quasi because my daughter had read them many times before I got a chance at them. We had lots of discussions about the books. Her memory was much better than mine, and the books blended together for me, and often I’d have to reread a book to see what she was saying. We also watched the movies together. Like Sponge Bob, these are also classics, and we shared the advent of a new cool thing together. It was also the case that the HP phenom is a current event for her classmates, so it was something that helped her find a point of contact with them.
Shakespeare, idolized and pedestalled today, was popular entertainment of the time, full of jokes and ribald humor designed to titillate the masses. His works are also classics.
The real point that I guess that I’m trying to make is that TV/no-TV, the real focus is elsewhere. The real focus is in sharing and being aware of relative position, and trying to create a sense of shared history that is a bonding element for times to come. It’s not “I was a good parent” and “my kid didn’t watch TV”. It’s “We did this together and we had a good time sharing it with each other”.
In that atmosphere, bad use of the TV (or any other thing) rapidly shows up as a loss of time together, and becomes distasteful to both child and parent. That’s the real goal, anyway, isn’t it?
TV or not, Bear’s going to do great, Blake. He’s lucky to have a mom like you!
) instead of TV and keep him on a unicycle with other kids!
KH.
