Drama Daddy: Channel Surfing

All the cool Mom and Dad bloggers have posted about it. And I’m sure most of us have nodded our heads and agreed.

I’m taking about how we love to hate TV for young kids.

Go ahead. Raise your hand if the Doodlebops drive you loony. If the Wiggles make you squirm. If you’ve ever thought that Higglytown needs an anti-hero—and some common sense. I’m right there with you.

Have you ever wished that Dora would drop the backpack and map and just get lost? Do the Backyardigans and Wonder Pets make you want to stifle small animals? And how many times have you cursed yourself for muttering one of those theme songs? “What’s gonna work? Teamwork! What’s gonna work?….”

Not too long ago, my five year-old daughter figured out how to reach her favorite TV channels. She can work the remote as fast as I ever could. And—since she isn’t growing up having to get up to change the channel or with a cable box the size of a shoebox and an actual line to the TV set—she’s sure to be an expert at it by the time she’s six or seven.

What bothers me though is that at five she’s already changing channels as soon as I leave the room. No, she’s not watching The Young and the Restless or trying to order pay-per-view, but if there’s a break on Noggin or the Disney Toon Channel, she flips over to check out some pre-teen comedy on Disney or Nickelodeon. Already, she’s figured out that if Mom and Dad tell her not to watch something, it must be good.

The problem is easily solved. All I have to do is put the remote out of reach, or—even better—take it with me if I walk out of the room. (That is until she figures out that you can actually change the channel on the TV set. Imagine doing that.) But, she’s still going to wonder what’s on those other channels, isn’t she?

My daughter is almost done with Kindergarten. The four year-old who went to school in September is now a five year-old who has started to read, add, and—sometimes—act like a grown-up. All of us parents can’t help but be proud when we see these changes. We watch our children growing, and, when they revert to floor-pounding tantrums, we tell them to “grow up.”

It’s an odd time, this age between about four and six. We remember the toddlers who we could still easily pick up and who relied on us for so much. But we see them growing, learning, making new friends, going to sports and activities and not always needing us by their sides. They’re beginning lives of their own—lives where they don’t need us every step of the way.

There are still reminders of their toddler years all around us—toys, pictures, maybe some two or three year-old artwork still on the refrigerator that makes us think of the two or three year-old they were not so long ago. It’s cliché, of course, to say that they grow up quickly. But, sometimes, maybe we’re at fault for letting it happen. Before we know it, the Kindergartner sneaking from Nick Jr. to TEENick is starting middle school herself. So, before my daughter surfs over to those channels for good, I’ll gladly suck it up, settle down, and watch another episode of the Wonder Pets saving the day with my five year-old. And maybe, if I’m lucky, it’ll keep her from surfing through her childhood too soon.