Dear Abby: My daughter watches sitcoms with her child

[cereta]

DEAR ABBY: My daughter watches TV sitcoms along with her precocious 4-year-old son who is being exposed to many "adult" themes, terms and politically incorrect infractions. She doesn't see the harm. Do you? -- NOT A TV FAN

DEAR NOT A TV FAN: Yes, I do. Your daughter's parenting skills leave something to be desired. At a time when she should be entertaining and enriching her son, she's entertaining herself. There are books she could read with him and programs they could view together that would expand both their intellects. It's a shame she's not availing herself of them.

Will this harm the boy? Maybe not. But she's not helping her son grow intellectually and creatively, either.

Comments

[cereta]

Oh, look, another Lucy pet peeve.

Notice that the letter writer is concerned with the content of the sitcoms, and says nothing about how often or how many the parent watches. Notice Abby leaping to the conclusion that the parent mother does not read to her child or watch education tv with him, because obviously if she is not devoting herself to her child every waking minute, her "parenting skills leave something to be desired."

Thing is, not only does Abby do this all the time, but so does the entire culture. Time runs an article about babies dancing to Beyonce, and must include a quote from an expert on what a shame it is that parents put their kids in front of music videos instead of interacting with them. Because lord knows you can just parents by two minutes on YouTube. A mother posts to a gaming forum about finding a game to play once a week, and she's "choosing gaming over her kids."

Not knowing the sitcoms the mother watches and what the letter writer considers "adult," I can't really judge whether the mother in question has good judgment or not, but the idea that (a) if a parent watches TV/plays a video game/anything not educational with their child, that must be ALL they do, and (b) parents should spend every waking moment interacting with their children annoys the crap out of me. It's stifling for the parent and the child.

For that matter, for all that we hear about the evils of using the TV as a babysitter, let's not pretend that before TV, parents spent vast swaths of time playing with their kids. Mothers, at least, had a lot more work to do in keeping the household running, and fathers, well... I'm not saying it's a good thing to plonk your kid in front of the TV 24/7. But can we stop assuming? Please?

[daedala]

You say that is if mothers' sole purpose in life were not to educate and enrich their children!

Yeah, I had the same reaction. WTF.

[kouredios]

All this, plus the idea that stories on television are suddenly worthless and unrelated to anything educational ever, just because of the medium. Watching TV with my child can often lead to discussions of issues that aren't triggered as easily in a non-visual medium.

Books are great, but so are television shows and movies. I'm tired of that shallow lack-of-analysis so much.

[cereta]

Seriously. Reading is important, no doubt, but my kid engages in lots of imaginative play sparked by TV.

[minoanmiss]

What else can I say but word?

[seperis]

Mothers, at least, had a lot more work to do in keeping the household running, and fathers, well... I'm not saying it's a good thing to plonk your kid in front of the TV 24/7. But can we stop assuming? Please?

It's weirdly hilarious when people don't grasp the education and entertainment of children really was never a twenty-four seven job for parents, and more, depending on time period, couldn't be. Depending on class, they were working and apprenticed at a young age, fostered out at a young age, with a nurse or a tutor or a governess or sent to school, or they went and stayed with random relatives for periods of time.

I've often wondered if the entire problem with the arguments about people not having time for their children is the fact that in history, the care and education of offspring was mostly a group effort and simply a lot of those ways we don't use/don't need anymore (ie, fostering, working, apprenticing) but the others are out reach for most people not in dire need as too expensive (nurse = very expensive; governess = school, babysitter/daycare = expensive). Now it's considered a requirement of parenting, and honest to God, I love my son but I could not teach him math to save my life. There's a reason for professionals.

(I speak as someone who did have a nanny off and on as a child, but that was because both my parents worked and we lived very rural, so she charged a lot less than daycare for three kids (which was also something we used). That changed when we got old enough to stay with our grandmother, whose age was a little high to deal with three kids below ten.)

[ambyr]

In amusing contrast, Carolyn Hax on Friday:

"It is hot and sticky, the kids and I are grouchy and my hubby is away at National Guard duty, can I please shut the blinds and put on a disney movie marathon in lieu of actually parenting for an hour or two? Thanks.

Carolyn Hax: Duh! Of course. The kids will love you for it. Punt and get some rest."

[cereta]

Heh. Dude, seriously. This past winter, my spouse was out of town and kiddo and I were snowed in for two days. You'd better believe the DVDs got a workout. We played games and cooked pancakes and snuggled, but I had grading to do and could only handle so many games of Hi-Ho Cherry-o.

[coraa]

I knew I liked Hax for a reason.

Shorter version of that letter

[minoanmiss]

Dear Abby: My family member does something I think they shouldn't. Please tell me that they are Evil and Wrong and Will Destroy The Universe.

Abby: Certainly! Thanks for framing it as a childrearing question; that makes it much easier for me to predict Dire Consequences and judge the hell out of someone I've never met, since we all know that any mistake in childrearing whatsoever can lead to Doom. Here you go!

Re: Shorter version of that letter

[celli]

+1!

Re: Shorter version of that letter

[omens]

Ahahahahahaha, yes.

Re: Shorter version of that letter

[cereta]

Hah, yes.

[madripoor_rose]

Something about the 'adult themes' is setting off alarm bells. Or triggering a memory that I learned that gay people existed by watching Soap, which would have been ages 7 to 11.

[cereta]

Yeah, I mean...I don't let Frog watch Two and a Half Men, because there are some toxic as hell messages (particularly about women) on it. Also, because I don't watch it myself. But yes, I find myself wondering what the adult concepts are in this case.

Response I just sent

[cereta]

Dear Abby,

I thought your response to "Not a TV Fan" was over-the-top, to say the least. The letter writer was concerned with the *content* of the sitcoms. She neither said nor implied that watching sitcoms is *all* her daughter does with her grandson.

The idea that a parent's every moment must be devoted to entertaining or educating their children is not only a new idea, but one that is stifling for both parent and child. I read to my 4-year-old daughter. We watch Word Girl and practice writing and play games. That doesn't mean I won't turn on a baseball game or sit and read a book of my own while my daughter plays by herself. Parents need leisure, too, and odds are good that whether the letter writer's daughter works outside the home or is a stay-at-home mom, she gets precious little time to herself. Maybe the sitcoms are inappropriate for the child, but if so, it's the *content* that's the problem, not that mom takes a bit of each day to entertain herself.

A fan of balance

[delphi]

My reaction when I read this yesterday? Ugh. Things I particularly object to:

1) There's nothing about exactly what makes these shows so adult (but I'm guessing it's references to sex that would probably go right over even a precocious four year old's head).
2) There's also nothing about how much time the daughter spends watching these shows. God forbid a grown woman is allowed to put her feet up for an hour to watch a couple of How I Met Your Mother reruns.
3) Popular entertainment can't be enriching? Watching television can't be an opportunity for discussion between a parent and child?
4) And children don't benefit from watching adult programming? I'm put in mind of David Mitchell's soapbox rant about references. I think the challenge of following an adult storyline certainly helps children grow intellectually, and I learned a lot more about the world in terms of social mores, history, and politics by watching SNL or Monty Python with my parents than from anything aimed at my age group.

That said, if the show in question is Two and a Half Men, I take everything back. :-P

[seperis]

For the record, if a kid can manage to follow a soap opera plotline that well, that's one hell of a memory (I am thinking of As the World Turns and Guiding Light when they were on; those suckers moved at the speed of light plotwise and marriage-wise).

4) And children don't benefit from watching adult programming?

I agree with this not only because Child and I are heavy media consumers, I lack omnipotence and honestly, the easiest way I have ever found to get something across to Child is for him to be the one to notice it and comment on it/ask me about it from television/movies. And he doesn't see it as me giving Life Lessons, so he pays attention and even argues on uncertain parts instead of simply listening without thinking about it.

(Avatar, the Last Airbender movie is a great example; he actually brought up confusion about the casting choices to me, though he wasn't sure exactly why it bothered him, not having the right words. Media as entertainment and as both positive and negative example are fantastic ways to bring home concepts that may feel a little too abstract or difficult to grasp unless you see them.)

[seperis]

My favorite part is the people worriedly talking about the evil of books and the dangers of women being able to read, the dangers of children reading, the danger of novels (we're talking the racy Jane Austen, btw), and how too much reading was bad for one's head and children should be outside or learning a skill.

Oh, wait, this is about TV being dangerous and non-enriching. Sorry, I get confuse sometimes by the identical arguments given back a hundred and a half years ago or thereabouts about books. Weird.