Ahh.. Child Discipline, Parenting Skills. What Your Friends Never Told YouAhh.. Child Discipline, Parenting Skills. What Your Friends Never Told You... Christie Mellor is one of our absolute favorite authors... below is a blurb from her "The Three-Martini Playdate; "Television: Is six hours a day too much? Some well intentioned but misguided people believe that by denying a child access to commercial television, one is willfully depriving him of a solid pop-culture education. Lacking basic television-watching skills, the poor child will be a social pariah at school, unable to join in on discussions regarding plot lines of the various popular shows. "Won't he feel alienated," they admonish, "when he doesn't know what a Yu-gi-oh monster is, or how to catch a Pokemon?" as if this four-year-old will be standing alone by the preschool water-cooler while the happy and popular children discuss the finer points of Japanese animation. Firs of all, unless your child is committed to the Amish life, he will simply know, through osmosis, detailed information about many popular childcare's television characters, without ever having seen a single show. Go to any schoolyard and you will find just as many children pretending to be Power Rangers as dinosaurs, and they need never have seen either one. They just know. Ok, so a movie on a weekend night, as a special treat, is fine. Or if, during the week, you have company and want to socialize without the aid of small children. Children whose daily exposure to television has been severely curtailed not only avoid a lifetime of obesity, diabetes, and bloodshot eyes, they usually develop quite impressive attention spans... When they are allowed a movie only as a special treat, they will generally watch the entire movie in a single sitting, a real bonus when our dinner party is running late"... Yes? My mind is just flooded with ideas!
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