Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Flavour of the Day with Noora


No More Television?

Almost all my nieces and nephews are addicted to television, same goes for my step daughter. Again, so I was when I was their age.

Among them, the eldest is 16 and the youngest is 7 years old. Most of them seem to love the same thing, sitcoms and comedies about teenagers. When I sit and watch what they are watching, I have to admit, the shows are funny and entertaining.

The problem is that they are in a culture that is so different from ours, in my family’s case at least!

I for one, do not want my daughter to think of boyfriends and relationships as something that is normal. Call me old-fashioned but girls these days seem to have lost all innocence and shyness, something I find very terrible.
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Yes, she will eventually be exposed to it in school, especially since she is in a coed school. However, there is a difference between her hearing about it from her friends and knowing that it is not acceptable in our family and between growing up while watching shows that make her believe it is normal.

Also, my concerns are not just restricted to such topics. I am also worried about the way kids in such shows dress and behave with their parents and friends, it is different from us.

As a parent, I am being confronted with yet another dilemma, let the kids watch such shows and explain what we see as right and wrong or remove such channels from the house altogether?

Which in your opinion is the moderate and correct decision?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I share your concern about these shows, although they are different in nature. What I hate about them is the way the kids get an attitude but in a funny way so I find my kids mimicking this attitude thinking it is funny, it took me a while to explain that talking back to an adult is not funny, and how discussions about what they want should be.
I did remove these shows for some time from my house but only to discover that when they go to their friends houses they spent their time watching there, so I found that was actually working backwards.
We allowed the shows again but after explaining thoroughly why we stopped it in the first place, now whenever they give me one of those smart "funny" answers I go "hmm is this the TV talking or you!"

Noora said...

That actually is a great way to keep your kids on their toes on how they behave :)

Thanks