Recently our family discovered Disney's Phineas and Ferb show. The kids enjoy watching it, and Matt and I like it too. However, it's not exactly geared to preschoolers and there are several elements that are less than ideal. There is the example of the bully treating the Pakistani boy in not-so-nice ways. There are fights and scrambles between Doofenshmirtz and Perry. There's lots of laser beam shooting at objects. Granted, it could all be a lot worse. I don't really feel that these negative things are glorified per se, but at the same time, my kids are very susceptible to the subtle influences. And there is really no educational value.
I should add that the show has a bunch of positive elements: there are strong themes of friendship and loyalty, the positive example of how Phineas and Ferb talk to other people nicely, themes of creativity and imagination, and my personal favorite-- each show has a song with humorous and clever lyrics. It's very entertaining.
All in all, it's a tough call whether or not to allow the kids to watch this show. Our solution (for now, anyway) was to create "Phineas and Ferb Friday." Instead of allowing the kids to watch the show throughout the week on the DVR, we decided to save it for Friday evenings when the whole family can sit down together and watch it. This way Matt and I know exactly what's in each episode and can talk with the kids about what we're watching. When we talked about Phineas and Ferb Friday with the boys they were excited about the idea. We are all looking forward to it tonight!
Hopefully things go well and the show is a positive thing for all of us. If we find that it's negatively influencing the way the kids play, talk, etc. we will have to change things. Maybe Matt and I will have to save it to watch after the kids are in bed! ;)
I should add that the show has a bunch of positive elements: there are strong themes of friendship and loyalty, the positive example of how Phineas and Ferb talk to other people nicely, themes of creativity and imagination, and my personal favorite-- each show has a song with humorous and clever lyrics. It's very entertaining.
All in all, it's a tough call whether or not to allow the kids to watch this show. Our solution (for now, anyway) was to create "Phineas and Ferb Friday." Instead of allowing the kids to watch the show throughout the week on the DVR, we decided to save it for Friday evenings when the whole family can sit down together and watch it. This way Matt and I know exactly what's in each episode and can talk with the kids about what we're watching. When we talked about Phineas and Ferb Friday with the boys they were excited about the idea. We are all looking forward to it tonight!
Hopefully things go well and the show is a positive thing for all of us. If we find that it's negatively influencing the way the kids play, talk, etc. we will have to change things. Maybe Matt and I will have to save it to watch after the kids are in bed! ;)
2 comments:
Love reading your posts as always Robbie! People gave me a lot of flack for letting Beab watch SpongeBob, but I didn't care... I even bought her SpongeBob jammies! You have to do what you think is okay for your own kids and if they like it and are doing well, then great!
Way to be proactive! Can I just tell you we learned this the hard way. =P Connor has come out with all kinds of things that - yeah... he certainly saw on a kids program we did not watch closely enough. We now "preview" almost everything. I am glad too. We recently rent an animated "kids" GI Joe movie - it had swearing in it! TONS of swearing actually. I was really mad, and Blockbuster just gave me a line. Such a pain - but so worth it not to have your kid say some really outrageous things!
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