Alan and appropriate media

[lesliepear]

Last night we were copying Family Guy on DVD for my SIL who is a big fan. I’ve not watched it much and Mark never had. So after the copy finished, Mark put it on to see how it came out. I was in the Alan’s bedroom sorting clothes and he called out something like it says it’s not for under 18. He was surprised at the language and adult references in it – but Alan happened to be watching it! Alan seemed to like the scene where they were throwing up a lot (I guess that’s 3 year old humor). Hopefully he won’t be permanently messed up by seeing a bit of it. Most of his TV watching that we’ve let him see has been Nick/Noggin, Cartoon Network and PBS (maybe some Disney channel). He’s seen very little adult non-cartoon TV on our watch (can't account for daycare time, especially when he was in an in home one -> they had the BET rap videos on once). (I once watched a CSI with him as baby – the episode on “furries”, because I wanted to see it – that’s the longest stretch of anything grownup I can recall.) I’ve even avoided the news as much as possible – except for the blizzard coverage last year (I figured how bad would it be to see people in the snow!)

We have finally discovered some non-kid music Alan likes. Mark likes to watch concert DVD’s. Most of them Alan will comment with “Turn it off” – he doesn’t like loud rock type music yet. (He did like the Moody Blues + an orchestra). I did notice the other day that he liked Norah Jones’s appearance on Sesame Street when she sun her song that had been tweaked to be about the letter Y. So we got a Norah Jones concert DVD and he liked that. I figure the more music Alan’s exposed to, the more he’ll like it. I do listen to whatever I want on the radio - which is a mix of pop, rock, disco, and oldies. (Although one day, I changed the classic rock station when they played “Highway to H*ll”!)

Comments

[yeoww.livejournal.com]

IMO Alan won't be affected by what he saw. In reality, the older kids get the less influence we as parents have over their TV viewing - they're not with us 24/7 and other people may not have the same opinions as we do. I found out my son had been watching South Park (or whatever that one kind of raunchy cartoon is called) with his dad for months - I never let either of my kids even watch The Simpsons up until fairly recently! And they both know that the language in that cartoon is inappropriate. So, Alan will be okay. You guys are the ones that instill the values, not the TV.