Parents - What Programs Have Been Banned At Your House?

[NhlNut]

An interesting thread. Not a parent, but I'll relate a little of my childhood. (I'm 37, so cable was just coming around way back then)

Mom and Dad considered TV "The Idiot Box". My 2 brothers and I were barely allowed to watch TV growing up. Friday primetime. Saturday morning cartoons. Sports on the weekends. 60 Minutes / Wonderful World of Disney with parents on Sundays. No TV on school days.

How did this affect me? I read more. I played sports. (mostly badly) I was always behind on what was "cool".
Seemed very unfair. [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

Now I watch a fairly large amount of TV, comparatively. Mostly sports. I watch most of it on tape. (no tivo yet) Very seldom am I just mindlessly watching. Can't stand the commercials. I think Belok is correct. The commercials are the most corrupting.

Severely restricting my TV exposure is probably one of the best things my parents did for me. It got me interested in other things.
Like cards. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Blarg]

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Personally, I grew up on Nickelodeon, and pretty much got bored of TV after I was too old for Nick. I was rarely disobedient, and pretty much grew up the very opposite of my materialistic drama queen sisters.

My sisters watched Disney until they turned about 15 and then switched to MTV and Sex in the City. They're both a giant mess, and will never be able to earn enough $ to satisfy the appetite for expensive worthless crap that has been driven into their brains. I swear, some of the ridiculous rebellious lines that they gave to my parents were straight from those Disney shows.


Our baby is about 3 months away, and the mommy and I have given up cable ourselves in preparation. It'll be better for us, and for the baby just to not have it around.

Personally, I think the commercials between shows do more harm than the programming itself. DVDs FTW.

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Wow, watching Sex and the City at 15? That show is probably extremely hard to get over at 30. I shudder for our country that that crap was ever popular.

And congratulations on having the guts to give up something you like for the betterment of your kids. Sounds like you have the right kind of perspective on what's really more important -- your most trivial and vapid of pleasures, or the influences your kid will be exposed to when young and extremely malleable.

[Blarg]

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An interesting thread. Not a parent, but I'll relate a little of my childhood. (I'm 37, so cable was just coming around way back then)

Mom and Dad considered TV "The Idiot Box". My 2 brothers and I were barely allowed to watch TV growing up. Friday primetime. Saturday morning cartoons. Sports on the weekends. 60 Minutes / Wonderful World of Disney with parents on Sundays. No TV on school days.

How did this affect me? I read more. I played sports. (mostly badly) I was always behind on what was "cool".
Seemed very unfair. [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

Now I watch a fairly large amount of TV, comparatively. Mostly sports. I watch most of it on tape. (no tivo yet) Very seldom am I just mindlessly watching. Can't stand the commercials. I think Belok is correct. The commercials are the most corrupting.

Severely restricting my TV exposure is probably one of the best things my parents did for me. It got me interested in other things.
Like cards. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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Very importantly, it freed up time. Regardless of what anyone thinks of t.v., watching it takes up a lot of time. And that time is almost always better used elsewhere. When I was growing up, my t.v. watching was restricted. That gave me more time to read, which put me way ahead of a lot of other kids my age in school.

It also freed up time to get my ass out of the house, which was good for socializing and staying physically active.

[Duke]

I'd rather have my kid watching Pulp Fiction than the stupid [censored] that they have on television these days. If you want to make sure that your kid is an idiot, give them free reign to the Disney Channel and Nick.

Spongebob is kinda funny, but even that sucks because they show it for 8 hours straight and a kid can waste a whole day watching it.

I think that people look at it all wrong. They think as "I want my kid to watch the things that stress the values that I think are important." I think in terms of "what can a kid watch and not grow up to be a moron?" Young kids are living the most important years of their lives.

[John Cole]

The 700 Club and Fox News

[Jamougha]

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It's interesting to read all these comments. Gives me a lot to think about! I've never been one to think that TV could influence a person's character really. (I certainly never thought that Disney was a horrible influence on little kids.)


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It's an ineresting question and no-one can really be sure yet. Myself though, I suspect strongly that my attitude and moral sense were conditioned pretty strongly by Doctor Who and the Biggles and Simon Templar books.

Stories are powerful.

[Blarg]

Remember The Lion King? Ever wonder why the zebras were so happy to see a lion born?

Remember Pop's explanation about the circle of capitalism? Err... circle of life? About how by eating zebras and crapping them out his ass to fertilize the forest, he was really doing them all a big favor and was quite the benefactor? I think the zebra's take on the "circle of life" would be substantially different.

Stories are indeed very powerful, and there's an ongoing pressure to shape kids' minds. Sometimes good entertainment comes out of it, but however good, bad, or indifferent the entertainment itself, adults' messages to children will be injected into it.

After all, adults are perpetually at war with each other, and the stakes are too high not to get our children involved.

[daveT]

I know one person who banned Barney from his house. The problem was that his kid had friends. One day, he came home singing the I Love You song.

He believed that his could should understand that everyone in the world is not nice. I think that he had some sort of conversation about the parents about this, but perhaps my memory is supplying dramatic effect.

Would be interested in hearing perspective on this.

[katyseagull]

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Wow, watching Sex and the City at 15? That show is probably extremely hard to get over at 30. I shudder for our country that that crap was ever popular.



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I only watched a few episodes. Never got into it, I'm not sure why. Please explain what your gripe is with that show. I thought everyone liked it and it was well received by the critics.

[DING-DONG YO]

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Amen. I think MTV is a disgrace as well. It promotes everything that is wrong in society - being materalistic, fake, self-centered. I'm not one of these conservative freaks, but something about it really gets me aggravated.

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It's interesting to read all these comments. Gives me a lot to think about! I've never been one to think that TV could influence a person's character really. (I certainly never thought that Disney was a horrible influence on little kids.)

I watched tons of TV growing up, mainly sitcoms and old shows on Nick. I almost never watch MTV but when I do I'm usually amused by it... I watch it like it's a trainwreck. I would think a lot of other girls are the same way. In other words, not idolizing those people, just laughing at them.

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How old are you Katy? I don't care if adults watch it. Do wutchalike.

When I originally brought up MTV, I was speaking specifically of it's effects on pre-teens and teens.

also, regarding what I bolded above, you really think pop culture, and by extension TV, doesn't effect people's behavior?

Regarding my comment above Re:MTV, I will qualify it by saying that how much I attempt to control the TV my children watch largely depends on them. If I have a grounded, sharp confident kid that sees the people on MTV for what they are (basically freaks, morons and people to allow yourself to be entertained by, but not people who's behavior should be emulated), then w/e, they can watch what they like.

However, if my kid is not so confident, a follower and overly prone to peer pressure, I will seek to minimive stimuli that I think will worsen this behavior. I would consider MTV to be an example of that stimuli.