Children Behaving Badly

My brother gave my son a present for his second birthday that I promised I would pay him back for when he had kids of his own. Uncle gave his only nephew a talking Bart Simpson doll. When you pulled its string, it would say adorable things, such as "Eat my shorts." A truly lovely gift for a 2-year-old just learning to converse.

At the time, my son had no idea who Bart Simpson was as I absolutely would not allow that show in my home. As an adult, I could laugh at it on occasion, but I actually found it pretty disturbing. The inappropriate, adult-themed humor aside, it was simply too crude and caustically sarcastic for my 2-year-old. I certainly did not want him repeating, parrot-like, anything he heard on that program. 

The doll got a voice box-ectomy. On a side note, Teddy Ruxpin had the same procedure, though that was simply because that talking bear creeped me out. So, my son got to keep the doll and pull the string all he wanted, but quickly grew bored with it as all it did was make a whirring sound as the string retracted. Score one for Mom, file one away for payback.

This was start of the toy war. We each strove to outdo the other with inappropriate gifts for each other's children that invariably made the adults laugh, but always mysteriously disappeared or were immediately, irreparably broken.

The kids soon were in on the joke, and knew which gift was really aimed at the parents. There were always appropriate and great gifts for the kids, too, so it is not as if they were ripped off in the process. But they did get to enjoy the grownups playing tricks on each other, which is in our family, a valuable life lesson.

I'm sure there were other TV shows that I simply do not remember, but for me "The Simpsons" was the start of it all. It was the first time I recall thinking about the lessons this stuff was teaching kids about how to speak to others, how to act towards others.

Since then, there have been countless programs, ostensibly geared for families, filled with kids who were smart mouthed, disrespectful and just generally badly behaved but, judging from the canned laughter, cute and endearing. Gone were the days of "Little House on the Prairie," "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" and, my personal favorite, "Family Affair."

I am not one who states popular media has been the downfall of our civilization. I still firmly believe it is the parent's job to raise well-behaved children. By this, I mean kids you can take out in public without having them throw a temper tantrum when told no, or kids that actually sit in their seats in a restaurant. But I do think TV and movies have played a role.

As busy parents, we sometimes don't closely enough monitor what our children are being exposed to by the electronic babysitter. I admit, I used it myself. Sometimes, it was the only way to get dinner done or the laundry folded as it came out of the dryer before everything in it needed ironing.

Working parents simply do not have enough hours in the day to get it all done without occasionally resorting to less-than-stellar parenting techniques, like putting in a movie that we know will hold their attention long enough to get the job of running a family done.

And yet...

We want our kids to have at least some of the same social cues as their peers. Sometimes that means they end up with influences we later regret. Who has not had their child come out with something completely inappropriate and totally unfamiliar, only to find out they picked it up from what we mistakenly thought was a kid friendly TV show?

What these influences do is lower the bar on acceptable behavior. The kids on TV display this basic, pervasive, pernicious disrespect. For their TV parents. For their TV siblings. For their TV friends and classmates. Kids don't always understand that what they see on TV is not real life, it is just make believe. All they see is that other kids, kids they identify with, are behaving badly and not getting in trouble for it.

It is said that by the time a child is 7, their core personality is formed. What they experience during those formative years may be overcome later in life, but those experiences have shaped them forever. When kids see bad, mean, rude and even crude behavior, these things become internalized and part of their inner development. And just to make sure those lessons stick, the consequences for the TV kids can't even be called negative. They get a laugh track.

The next time time you are at school picking up your kids, or at the mall and overhear a group of pre- or newly adolescent kids speaking in ways that shock you, think about it. It is the nature of children - and adults - to want to out do one another.

When our definition of mean was Nellie Olsen; when Greg was admonished for calling Bobby a "little stinker"; when telling someone off was quoting Marion Cunningham in a pique of anger saying, 'Sit on it', outdoing those barbs was fairly tame. When a 2-year-old hears, "Eat my shorts," the next step passes tame, exceeds good taste, and simply waves goodbye at common decency in the rear-view mirror.

I'm terrified of what the next step will be after listening to the lyrics of rap music. I can honestly say I've heard words in that so-called music that have never passed my lips.

If it were only the words, it would be bad enough. The themes, descriptions and -- forget innuendos -- flat-out statements can make me blush. It sickens me that this is what kids hear. Today's kids will be no different from previous generations and will seek to outdo this.

I guess it all comes back to the parents. Pay attention to what your kids are exposed to on TV, in movies and in music. Kids are like computers: garbage in, garbage out.