I love television. Since marriage has decreed that the remote ownership shifts to the wife, I get to watch what I'm told that I like. I think it's in the vows somehwere between honor and sickness and in health... This is of little consequence since I generally enjoy whatever I watch with my lovely wife.
As for kids, television is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, as a parent, it's easy to fall into the trap of letting the television be the babysitter. If it's an occassional thing and under the right circumstances this is fine, but in large quantities is not so good. They need the interactive experience of playing with others. So this is the challenge to interact more with the kids instead of letting the television show them their role models.
Within these social interactions lies in the "Play-date". I'm not really sure where this term came from. I can discern from the words what it means, but we never called it a "Play-date". My phrasing was, "I'm going out to play with Scott and Johnny!" or, "Tomorrow, Scott and John are coming over to build a fort!"
The phrase play-date never left my lips. Now I have nothing against the phrasing although it still feels aquard to say. As I have come to thinking about this subject I have to analyze what is different now compared to when I was a kid.
I suppose it all comes from our new enviroment on the East Coast, although I think the term is widely used everywhere now...
As for integration of television into the family unit... Well Calvin usually has something that fits. Jonah seems to be doing this a lot lately as well... For a long time, Jonah has been reciting back funny parts of his cartoons. Sometimes they make sense, most of the time I think you really had to see it to get the humor. But we laugh just the same... Lately he's been adding background theme music to his activities. It's quite funny. Although I have to wonder if we should be concerned about it or not...
Enjoy some Calvin with your day...
No comments:
Post a Comment