Child Protection?
Was reading someones blog about Harry Potter and began to think, as I often do...WWJD? not what would Jesus do, but the other big JC in my life, Jayne Crossman, my wonderful wise mother, who has an instinctive knowlege of all things child friendly and an instinctive hatred of Harry Potter.Her objections are mainly spiritual, as were many of her objections to much of my early childhood viewing - Thundercats, turtles, he-man, ghostbusters, simon and the witch, the list goes on...As much as I love and respect her from trying to protect us from things that may mess our heads up, I am still terrified of the dark, strangers, spiders, Dogs, Armpit hair, noises in the night, Birmingham, and most other things.
My thoughts were this. Once we have our own offspring, how far should we go to protect them? it seems that society today is all about risk assessment, and avoidance of litigation, which seems to be taking the fun out of a lot of things. as much as much protected us from what we watched on TV, the rest of our time was relatively care-free, and on the odd occasion we got hurt playing, we learnt to get over it (and to sing Jesus take the pain away!)
It seems now that children are no longer allowed to play games that have no educational benefit, or that run the risk of causing harm in any way shape or form (see lucindas 'conkers' Blog). There are also plans, in Birmingham at least, to stop any Christian Holidays being celebrated in Schools to avoid offending those of other faiths.
Is this political correctness gone mad? or is society such that we need to take these measures now? How far do we go to protect our children?
posted by jodes da princess @ 7:55 PM
9 Comments:
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Jodes, don't forget that you're afraid of humans making animal noises.
My kids are gonna be feral children. I say let 'em experience the rough and tumble of life. Conkers and all. It also fits into my 'dirty hypothesis'.
With TV, I think that I'll be fairly relaxed about what they watch. But I'll probably change my mind by the time I have kids.
I think I'll be pretty relaxed too. Any programmes aimed at children will probably be allowed. I am all for Tim's 'dirty' hypothesis.
What about stuff like Eastenders? they have some stuff on htere that is completely unsuitable for even me let alone my babies. would you allow them to watch whatever, whenever? (not trying to say your'e wrong, just trying to see whether I really am going to be an over protective parent!)
So I gotta ask. What is the 'dirty' hypothesis?
My children and I will spend all our free time clay modelling, finger- and foot-print painting and dancing in the garden.
Some of my friends at school had no tv and they were abit weird. They were also addicted to the tv whenever they went round to friends' houses. Mucho fun for the friend.
But I know we are not saying no tv at all, just what to watch. Hmm. On Richard & Judy last week, they did an item on modern day cartoons and how they were damaging to children's senses. Mainly eyes. They showed clips of the powderpuff girls and it was all very fast and furious graphics and all over the place music. I just remember cartoons being really static in our day (e.g. topcat and thundercats).
A little girl (6 yrs) in my class watches eastenders. She told me this around the time we were all discussing soap opera validity on jon's blog, so the timing was quite freaky. ANYway, I was really intrigued and asked her what she liked about it. And she just said she liked Sam. From what I could glean, I think she liked the glamour. And I think to her, it was grown up telly.
I've watched eastenders since forever. I pretty much watched whatever my parents watched. I don't know if I'd let my kids watch soaps these days, but I liked my parents attitude. They never kept anything hidden from me. I felt treated like a grown up.
Bring back Top cat, the undisputable leader of the gang! Check out the theme tune here
Ok, so my dirty hypothesis, which might be different to the one that Jon's talking about is this. If you try to keep kids away from anything that will give them germs and the like, their bodies will never get the ability to fight off infections and stuff. I didn't think Jodie was just talking about TV you see. But it might still apply there, and in other areas. I think that I'm gonna let my kids get dirty, live life on the edge, and not be too over zealous about what they watch.
My old man said to me that he didn't wnat me watching soaps, not coz of the content, but the addictive nature of them. And I have to agree with him. I enjoy watching neighbours every now and then, but I'm really not bothered if I miss it for months or whatever.
And I agree Vic, a lot of kids who didn't have a TV back in the day were pretty weird.
But with WHAT to let them watch, it's quite tough. Becuase while you might exposing things to them so they can learn, it might be put across in a really unhelpful way- the glamour of promiscuity, de-personification of women etc. Ideally, I'd let them watch a fair bit, but watch it with them, so I could discuss whats happened, not in a judgemental way, but to get them thinking about the real issues. But I don't know how practical that is. Its also about giving the kids other options- games, football, activities and what not. I really don't want TV to be the centre of the home.
This is too long. So in conclusion. Yes.
See I worry a lot about my little girls (cos we're only having girls). I know that a lot of the time things I take in through my eyes really influence my thought patterns, in particular seeing music videos and magazines of very thin women (in a need to diet sense rather than a lusting like crazy sense!) I dont want my girls to have big issues with how they look. As much as my parents have played a part in influencing my body image, media plays a much larger part, sad to say.
I wonder how much influence it has in other areas. me and my sister werent allowed to watch stuff with promiscuity in it, even neighbours was a bit risque, so this meant that for years the only influence I had in this area was my parents. this made for lots of positive ground work.
However, Mia (bridesmaid at my wedding) has been allowed to watch pretty much what she wants since she was little, and despite mum+dad doin their best to model stuff to her, she still couldnt believe that me and Jon didnt have sex before we were married, the concept was so alien to her, it didnt occur that not having sex was an option. (fortunately my mum has now had lots of time to talk to her before she started dating!)
I dont want my babies to grow up overly sheltered and unaware of the bad stuff that goes on in the world, but at the same time, I dont want them to believe that the things they see on tv are the right or only way to do things. how many scenes of sex portrayed in a positive nature have you ever seen on telly?
I think maybe watching alongside your kids so you can discuss what you watch may be the way foreward, and maybe only watching certain programmes. I dont want to socially isolate my kids though (cos after all, they're already gonna be gingers!)
True Jodes, very true. I heard something quite interesting on the radio recently (you see, I don't have a TV licence, so I only use my TV for DVD's and Playstation, andits working pretty well). This guy analysed the top 200 or so hollywood films from the last 20 years with sex scenes in them. And he found that there was only one that even had a slight reference to safe sex. Any guesses which one it was??? Yep, Pretty woman. Only one.
I agree that I think that the media plays a huge role in my view of myself and of life. So I guess we need to shelter our kids unitl they can critically understand what they are being bombarded with. That might be quite young for things like cartoons with goodie baddie themes, or latter for more complex relational stuff.
But my instinct is that I'd rather my kids saw it, and knew it was wrong than felt unprepared for the world. My first experience of horror movies was a t sleep overs. Would it have been better to experience them in the safe environment of home first?
But my future wife may disagree with me on this. And she'ss undoubtedly get her way...
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