Television’s Impact On Children

We try to limit the amount of television our children watch and we are especially careful in just what it is they are allowed to see. I feel kind of silly saying they because my daughter is only 7.5 months, so it is premature to speak about her TV habits.

Here is my somewhat embellished recitation of one instance of the impact of television on my son.

Scooby Doo- My son loves Scooby Doo, just can’t get enough of it. Asks for Scooby snacks and tells me about the ghosts and goblins that the gang encounters. When I tell him that I used to watch Scooby when I was his age his face get’s kind of scrunched up, I think that sometimes it is hard for him to imagine me as a child.

There are two primary things that he has taken from Scooby and they are both phrases. If he is building a tower of blocks and it falls, or something silly happens he likes to say “Zoinks!”

But the thing that really makes me laugh is his use of the word “doomed.” This past weekend we had dinner with my folks on Saturday night. As we were preparing to leave he engaged in his normal stall tactics, which I was too tired to deal with. So I looked at him and said that if he didn’t hurry we would be late and miss dinner.

His response, “Oh no Daddy! We must hurry because if we miss dinner we will be doomed.”