Children Beware

posted by Alan
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Someone once told me that during baby raising time, the years go by fast but the days go by slow. Since it's true that the days are pretty long, id assume that soon the months will turn into years and Janie will be reading and watching and listening to all types of child-friendly entertainment. We've already collected a decent amount of material in preparation and have been previewing some of it. Maybe my decades of living in this morally corrupt world has robbed me of my innocent way of appreciating things, but I had a few issues with some of what I saw.

Let's start with a classic Disney tale of love, lobsters and red hair. I already can hear some of your reactions. "i LOVE the Little Mermaid!" I'm sure you do, but I doubt she loves you back. She doesn't even love HERSELF! The heroine of this fairy tale is a beautiful princess who is obsessed with changing her body so that she could be with a boy. Sorry to dump on your favorite movie, but what message is this sending to our little girls??? Why couldn't she remain a mermaid and demand that he love her for who she is? The happy ending came when she finally got what she wanted and magically became something that she wasn't born to be. In today's world, we don't have magic, we have plastic surgery and Ariel wouldn't have a movie, she'd have a reality show on VH1.


If this is Janie in 15 years, we did something wrong.
Next on the chopping block is a book that we received as a gift. Daisy actually pointed this one out as she was reading it to Janie. Yes, I see the sweet, intended message of the story, but it's still odd. I'll let you decide for yourself:

Starts off innocent. A mother loves her baby and rocks him to sleep. When he's 2 years old, she sneaks into his room and if he's asleep, she picks him up and rocks him as well.

But then, when he's a teenager, she crawls into his room and if he's asleep and doesn't know it, she rocks that "great big boy back and forth." Then after he grows up and moves out on "dark nights, she got in a car and drove across town."

"If the lights were out, she opened his bedroom window, crawled across the floor and if he was really asleep, she rocked that great big man back and forth." In the end, the son rocked his mother back and forth. Funny, no mention of a wife.


Forgive the cynicism of this post. In today's age of psychological instability, image problems, sexual predators and political correctness overload, maybe some things just don't translate as well over time. Shoot, have you ever seen the classic movie Breakfast at Tiffany's? If you have, I don't even have to explain what parts of that movie would cause race riots today. Nevertheless, to make up for my sometimes overly-analytic mind, Janie has Daisy, who can enjoy just about anything that she watches or reads. I guess I'll just take her outside to play.