I’m the youngest of five kids, and my other siblings are all 11 through 7 years older than me. So they saw a lot of cool stuff the first time around and made sure I got into it, too.
Even if they weren’t really old enough to be nostalgic, they were old enough to feel I needed to be “raised right” and learn about all the things they had seen when they were little. Rocky & Bullwinkle, The Beatles, Star Trek, MASH, Abbot & Costello, computers – all of these one brother or sister of mine or another turned me onto and I was surprised when the kids around me didn’t know them, too.
Now I’m doing that with my son – turnabout is fair play after all. And while I let him discover things on his own or from friends, I try my best to avoid things I think are crap. “Our television doesn’t play Barney” was a great line that kept the purple dinosaur out of our house. There was, however, no avoiding that time traveling, train-riding, multicultural family in Dinosaur Train, but boy did I try.
What’s the worst thing you’ve done to keep something you thought was dumb away from your child? How have you inserted your own sense of “being raised right – meaning the way I was” into your child’s life?
I’m going to write about some of the ways I do it in the coming days and weeks. Feel free to chime in in the comments or drop me a line if you want to write about it yourself.
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