My wife came up and told me that Sesame Street had done another spoof. This time it was a skit called "Desperate Horse-wives." I got a groan when I asked if the characters were less than neigh-borly.
In all seriousness, I'm not that thrilled with how the folks at Sesame Street parody network TV shows. While I am sure that the creators mean simple and innocent fun with their skits, I believe it also sends the message that the shows they represent are normal and acceptable in normal households. I'm not sure how normal we are, but Desperate Housewives is a show that we do not let in our house. My children know that when Extreme Makeover Home Edition is over and they hear, "Previously on Desperate Housewives..." power to the television is to be immediately terminated. It's almost comical how they scramble to turn it off, as if they were diving on a live grenade.
While it may not be a grenade, many TV shows are painfully difficult for us to watch these days. Some of the shows are so corrosive, I wonder how anyone can possibly watch them. Consequently, some nights we simply don't turn on the television set. Instead, we will read a good book or play a game together, if we don't split up to do separate things. We avoid the shows not because we like feeling superior or cerebral, but because we've found that these shows actively interfere with our hearts and minds.
8-9Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies. (Philippians 4:8, The Message)
I can't come out with a list of TV shows that I think are bad or good. The verse above should be more than enough for the average Christian, especially when it's paired with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Each person is responsible only to God for decisions like these. However, Jesus did give us a special charge with children.
"And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck. Mark 9:42 (NIV)
To me this verse means that God takes the destruction of children's innocence very seriously. This is why the Sesame Street skits irritate me. It feels like they're playing with fire. Look smart all you want, but I would prefer if they would just stick with "C is for cookie," and the yip-yip monsters.
What? You've never heard of the yip-yip monsters? Yip Yip
"[Adolescents live in] an institutionalized culture of interruption, where our time and attention is being fragmented by a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets." —Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age [usatoday.com, 6/23/09]
I'm not sure what's worse, this news or the dark prediction of her book title.
This little, somewhat cute video is a reminder to me that kids process losses differently, but they take their cues from their parents. This child lost another fish the week before, so she knows some of the "customs" her father likely introduced, such as saying a few words over the departed. It's really interesting when the child and "mommy" switch places and she helps a somewhat detached parent say a few words over the fish, which are the same as what she said at the start of the video and quite possibly close to what the father likely said the week before.
Patterns and traditions help us process grief in the little losses as well as the big. Losing and grieving are part of life and pets are a way of introducing our kids not only to the responsibilities and emotions of caring for a pet, but also the natural loss and grief that will eventually come. When other, larger losses occur, we fall back on what we were taught by our parents and others around us who shared these small griefs. This can be a blessing, as in this little girl's life, or a curse of following a pattern of denial, avoidance and anger. In that case, it would be better for a person to be thrown into a patternless void where they are forced to find their own way of coping, in the hope of stumbling onto a friend or "life coach" who can help them find their way.Jesus said it this way:
[On the other hand,] if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.
We can't be perfect, but as parents, we shape the future of our children by how we live our lives, in love and hate, involvement and indifference, attention and neglect, gain and loss, gratitude and grief. Giving them healthy patterns to follow is a gift of love and hope.
Family Guy and Two and a Half Men are two of the funniest shows on television. I've seen them and they are hilarious, but I can also state that they're also two of the raunchiest. So when the Parents Television Council notices and takes action, why are they surprised, let alone offended?
Yet offended they are, and they've fired their own shots in return. The problem is that they don't stick. Funny or no, I don't let Family Guy or 2.5 Men in the house. There's a difference between being funny and being good funny. Good funny is being funny without resorting to titilating and embarrasing their viewers. There are plenty of funny shows, but there aren't nearly enough good funny shows.
For movie reviews that help you make a choice, my pick has to be PluggedInOnline.com.
Oopsie. This should make parents think about where they put their keys. A six year-old kid drives on a highway to get to school to make PE and breakfast. I guess breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
One question: were the parents charged with Child Endangerment for letting him have access to the car or for letting him play Grand Theft Auto? This is a game where you can ruthlessly gun down innocent people and get away with it, where you regain player health by having sessions with prostitutes, where you live as a member of an underworld crime syndicate loaded with racism, corruption, and rampant murder. Letting him play should be considered reckless child endangerment. I avoid judging situations where I don't know the whole story, and the media never tells the whole story. On the other hand, I can't think of a case where a young child who is learning to spell "house" and "car" should ever be allowed to play GTA.
The fact that he drove to school thinking it was just like the video games shows us yet again that kids do have trouble sometimes distinguishing between games and reality. Parents must help their kids realize that life doesn't have a reset button and if you die, you don't come back by hitting "Continue." His dad needs to think these things over while he waits for bail and sees the real, living examples of thugs living the GTA life.
My daughter lost her first tooth a few weeks ago. She lost her second tooth this week. She's only five and I'm wondering if this is too early, because I didn't start losing teeth until age 6 and change.
The second tooth had an air of deja vu, too. Like I did with my first lost tooth, my daughter came down to our living room after bedtime, worried that it would fall out. Just like my dad did nearly 30 years ago, I reached in and flipped the little tooth out with the same flick of the finger. It was almost an identical replay of what losing teeth was for me back then.
I guess we all become our parents to some extent, but to follow the footsteps so easily was uncanny!
Another one of my friends--Marsha Drews--has lost her child in a completely unexpected and traumatic way.
Right now the questions are one word. How? Another? God?
I don't get it. I just don't get it. How can the death of a child do anything but carve a gaping wound in the heart of a family? This is not ...it just ...I don't know.
When I can coherently type, I'll let you know. Please pray for Marsha and her family.
Since getting a used N64 over a year ago, our family has been dragged forward into the modern console-game era. Starting with Pong in the 70s, the consoles have evolved into a three-dimensional world where you can bag a deer, haul in a trophy bass, and save the known universe from near-certain annihilation ...all before noon.
Our latest addition has been the Playstation 2. This is a current console in that game titles for the PS2 are still being released for it and you can find games in chain stores like Target and Wal-Mart. It is also a very nice step down from the $30+ game prices of the PS3, Xbox 360, and the Wii. Any PS2 titles we get will still be playable on a PS3 when we upgrade years from now.
If we upgrade at all, that is.
Since our son took his birthday money and bought a used PS2 for his birthday a few months back, we have enjoyed ...okay, I haveenjoyed the games a little too much. You'd be amazed how much of my chronic pain fades to the background when I'm trying to fight my way through to the next goal of a game. This has had a carry-over affect on our 9 year-old son that has kept me worried quite a bit.
Last night, God worked it out for us to visit a family we hadn't caught up with in a long time. One of the things that came through our conversation last evening was that they have seen such a change over the last few months by limiting PC and console games to an hour a day with their children. I seem to remember that limit existing for our N64 console so very long ago.
Fast-forward to this morning. Attitudes were somewhere south of awful and my bride of 15 years was pulling her hair out trying to work with our surly brood. The idea of an hour limit, fresh from our talk last night, burst forth on the scene like a level 99 Sora with his Ultima Weapon blazing! We seized the opportunity to pray about it and we both felt like an hour on weekdays and an hour and a half on weekends would be more than enough for our kids to have, after they've completed their chores and with no "guarantee" that they will always have that time (i.e., we have something come up and they don't get their time, then it's too bad).
It is now 30 minutes after we have instituted the hour rule and already attitudes are north of decent. Young and old are plotting how to get to play board games with each other and, if they don't know how, by golly they'll teach them how to play! It's amazing! What we couldn't beg them to do before the limit is now somehow what they really want to do. The hour limit was drastic, but already I feel my family coming back out from under the control of pixels and programs. We don't like making hard and fast rules like this, but this is one rule I think my family can't do without.
While I don't have an hour limit (yet), I also plan to limit my time on the PS2. My fictional fishing buddies may miss me, but I'd rather have a real family anyway.
Todd Wilson over at FamilyManWeb.com just sent me a good reminder. Here it is:
It’s a beautiful, spring morning here in Northern Indiana. The sun is shining, the temperature is well below freezing, and there is a winter storm warning for the next two days. Perfect weather for finishing up the last minute details before we hit the road next Wednesday---NOT!
Actually, I feel a little overwhelmed and discouraged. I’m having a tail light issue on the RV, which I hadn’t anticipated, my grandmother will be going to heaven soon, and---did I mention the winter storm thing?
Here’s the real kicker: time is passing at lightning speed, and I don’t like it. Just yesterday, my wife was talking to an old high school friend who mentioned that her daughter would be going to college in the fall and she was saddened by the thought that she was---leaving.
When my wife relayed their conversation to me, I was taken back in time to a restaurant table filled with a bunch of young couples that were entertained by a little girl in a highchair who could say, “Bubbles.”
Now the restaurant is gone, some of the couples are no longer couples, and the little bubble girl will be going to college in the fall---and I’ve got a lump in my throat.
That’s the thing about time. It sneaks up on you and changes things before you notice or can do anything about it. It takes little girls and boys and turns them into men and women. It takes fried chicken-making grandmothers and confines them to wheelchairs unable to communicate, eventually transforming them into fond memories.
Time’s doing ‘it’ right now. My little daughter who begs her very busy father to play Candyland will quit asking one day. And about the time I’m starting to have time---she won’t be there.
Drat that dastardly time!
But my ‘drats’ won’t change things. My only recourse is to enjoy my family, the cold weather, and a game of Candlyland today because the bubble girl is going to college in the fall.
"Dastardly time" is unrelenting, and just like Todd says, it changes things and moves people beyond our reach. You know, since I've lost the ability to work full-time, you'd think I'd naturally have more time for my kids. Imagine my shock when I'd looked back over the months and found that I'd spent a lot of time on "stuff" and not as much on my kids as I would like.
When I was a kid, I had a big sandbox in my back yard. It was Tonka heaven! In the summer, I would liven things up and get a hose to create "water management projects." One of the first things I learned working in "muck" was that sand and water have their own mind about where they want to go. Holes that would normally stay where you put them needed something in them or they would disappear as quickly as you dug the hole. It's the same thing with time. Time will naturally fill in the voids unless you intentionally put something there to keep it open.
What they say is true: you make time for the important things. No one went to their grave wishing they'd put in more overtime or pressed harder for that raise in pay. Work is work; it's what makes living possible. Don't forget to live. Make the time for your family.
