Picture Perfect Thursday
Will return next week. Sorry.
Shopping… It is just plain scary sometimes
Well, TheWife had a change of heart yesterday and decided to use the time we had to get some Holiday shopping done, which I was loathe to do, and it was a dreadful experience. But not for the reasons I expected.
We hit in our travels two of the three “Big Box” retailers in our area. Wal-Mart (not my choice) and K-Mart. (Sorry Target we will get to you soon) What hit me hardest was how empty these stores were. I fully expected hideous crowds and long register lines. Well the register lines were a little long but that was because neither store had more than 4 registers open. This is the holiday shopping season isn’t it? So that made the shopping much easier to take.
What did wind up scaring me was what I saw while shopping. Now I am no prude, and am more than happy to poke fun at people that consider this nonsense “appropriate” clothing, but people come on now. Some of this stuff looked more like it belonged in the back of a magazine that comes in a brown paper wrapper than something that any reasonable human being would put on their child. Now that set me back a bit, but not all that much, because there is always some level of tastelessness in clothing, and it really is a matter of opinion. The same way I view these clothes, I would assume is the same way that people who would actually buy something from the Wholesome Swim wear company would view what I allow my daughter to wear.
But then we went over to the toy department. Now I am not going to talk about the “Worst Toys” such as those on the W.A.T.C.H. list, you can find that here. There are plenty of toys of questionable quality and safety, and I personally consider it the job of the parent to take those things into consideration.
Can I ask a question here? Is there anybody that doesn’t think Bratz dolls are the most hideous dolls in the world? I mean, I know plenty of women that for years have railed against the “horrors” of Barbie with her thin waist and unrealistic proportions, but when you compare poor Barbie to these micro waisted, frighteningly big eyed, dressed like street walker dolls, Barbie is a dream by comparison. At Barbie has some clothes that don’t make her look like a hooker. And I am not buying any doll for my daughter where I will wind up explaining (and I heard this already from another child), “Why does this doll have a “earring” in her belly button?” Of course not to be outdone, Mattel has added a similar line of junk called “My Scene” which are equally ugly but (from what I saw anyway) a little less trashy in the clothing area. I guess I should feel thankful that Hasbro (under much pressure from parenting groups) pulled their planned “Pussycat Dolls” which was due out now.
While I am on this, lets talk a moment about fashion heads, shall we? Do we really need our daughters “learning to apply makeup” to an over sized head? And again, what are they “learning” with all the “bling-bling” and out of style (I hope) horribly bright colored eyeshadow.
I used to think that Polly Pockets was the bane of parents everywhere with their tiny parts and little plastic clothes. “How much worse could it get?” I wondered. Well it seems I got my answer in the “Littlest Pet Shop” series of toys. How much worse…uh… never mind… I don’t want to know.
Specialty TV sets now seem to be all the rage, and I see people buying them, for prices far more than a standard 13″ set (since they are for “kids” they are all 13″ sets). Disney of course started this with the Princess TV and DVD player a few years back, but now we have Dora, and Sponge Bob (a bright yellow colored set which is scary enough in its own right), Winnie the Pooh, Superman and more. Do any of these parents understand that these sets will live long past the time that their children will be willing to allow such childish things to remain in their bedroom? What do you do with it then? Oh, and just for the record (before somebody says it), I will not allow my daughter to have a TV in her room at least until she hits her teen years.
Now let me preface this last one by pointing out that I actually do like a lot of LeapFrog products. But now let me ask… Do they need to make them ALL so darn noisy? Every one? And if they do, could they at least start adding a volume button (not a switch to “high” and “low”)? I swear some of them are just bought by people to passively get back at a child’s parents for something.
And, no I am NOT being Grichy. I am not Grouchy (which is surprising after shopping last night), but I just think sometimes a modicum if common sense could be applied. Is that too much to ask?
Well trained…
Every so often I stop, look around and notice something. The women in this house have me well trained. All of them. Even the dog.
But I think TheWife is the most stealthy at it. The two of us will be going out to dinner tonight to celebrate her birthday (yesterday). Yesterday we went out (family style) to dinner. She enjoyed a birthday present of a 3 day weekend at the spa, and came home to a “wrapped present” of an iPod Nano. Before Thanksgiving, she was taken out to dinner by her Sisters for her birthday, and this weekend, we will have the traditional Birthday Cake and coffee.
So, in reality, she has managed to turn her Birthday into a week long gala. This is not the first time… but it is the first time I actually noticed. She has me well trained.
So it is not just me (or you)
Today’s article, For kids, is 10 the new 15? from MSNBC finally lets us know we as parents are not losing our minds, or just “turning into our parents.” That teen/tween line has been breeched and kids are in fact doing more sooner.
I guess it is in some senses not really all that strange, I mean my daughter is doing school work in the 1st grade that I didn’t do, probably until the third grade (or later). We (society) learned that children are sponges that absorb knowledge at an extremely fast pace, so we encourage that. What it seems we haven’t considered is where that acceleration could lead.
(Now I am not advocating slowing down the learning process. I think it is wonderful that a child can absorb so much and we should feed that thirst for knowledge. )
Now as the Associated Press article states, some of it is currently attributed to nutrition. As an outspoken critic again hormone laced milk products, I of course will lay some blame here as well, though exactly how much is easily debatable.
External stimuli is of course also a factor. I mean regardless of the fact that I control what and how much television my daughter watches, or what she reads, etc. Outside influences (ie. school friends, etc) still have an effect.
So what do we do? How do we stop them from trying to grow up too fast? At least I now know it is not just me.
Brought to you by… Who?!?
In a Sunday article that not many probably noticed (except those looking for such things… and I am not one of them, I just happen to read them), the Washington Post had what may, from an educational standpoint, be the scariest article I have read in some time.
It would be easy to dismiss the article, Science a la Joe Camel as “just politics” on the surface. The initial points drawn out is how the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) turned down 50,000 free DVDs to screen An Inconvenient Truth in classrooms.
In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film; and they saw “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs.
The key however is in that last little statement. “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members.” Because, as Laurie David the author discovered, it is all about the “benefits.” Exxon Mobile has given $6 million to the NSTA and holds a seat on the board (so much for steering free of special interests). Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API) are also large donors, and the
API also produced the film “You can’t be cool without Fuel” which was distributed by the NSTA.
But this doesn’t stop at just the oil companies, I mean the article goes on to point out Forestry Lessons that were, get this, written by Weyerhaeuser (a lumber and paper company) and Internation Paper as well as information in Biogenetic Engineering by Monsanto.
I don’t know about anyone else, but to me this makes about as much sense as the Roadrunner asking for a safe route of travel from Wile E. Coyote. He may give “information” but you have to question the value and motives of the information.
Couple these things in with the all too well documented assault put forth by trying to pass off Intelligent Design as science, and it seems that today’s text books are less like science, and more like science-fiction, or just plain fantasy. As the article concludes, “In the meantime, Mom and Dad may want to keep a sharp eye on their kids’ science homework.”
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