Kids These Days
Author: Heather Date Posted: August 24th, 2008Current Mood:
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I spent the day with my friend who was watching her 3 kids yesterday. (not really her kids, but to make it easier, they’re effectively her kids) Since children are little terrors and balls of energy, and we just wanted to hang out and watch TV, I brought along 3 sets of TV shows with me for them to watch. Now keep in mind the oldest of these kids is 7.
I brought Dinosaurs, Fraggle Rock and Transformers. I myself never saw the latter two when I was a kid because I was born after their time, but Katie and I was a huge enthusiasts of Dinosaurs at that age. We decided to start them off with that at first. They loved the Baby but couldn’t sit still long enough to listen to the jokes that made the show so funny to begin with. So we decided to put on Fraggle Rock.
The only reason I have Fraggle Rock is because my boyfriend grew up with it. It’s charming puppets and just amazing. Two of the characters were just sitting there talking and the kids were so restless. A small gimmicky thing happened and they were paying attention and laughing. Then it went back to moving and complaining when more characters were talking.
So we tried Transformers. The oldest boy had seen the movie and loved it, so we figured that getting back to the roots would be good for him and it is a good show. Nope - they couldn’t stay quiet. They kept asking if they could watch SpongeBob instead.
In this day and age, is it really that hard to focus on characters talking? In the shows I brought, the dialogue is what made the show. Sure you had your gimmicky-slapstick moments like throwing Baby across the room, but a lot of the humor was found if you just listened.
Has SpongeBob really affected kids that much that all they rely on is visual humor? I’ve seen SpongeBob before and it seems more like an ADD-riddled “laugh-a-thon” then anything with a solid plot. There’s no “We’re at A, they’re at B, we need to get there and this is how we’ll do it” converstation. It’s depressing to think that this might be a trend. But since it’s making money, who’s going to care?