I must be getting old. Well, at least from the standpoint of what I find ok in the media - especially TV. Our family likes to watch TV together at night but it's getting harder and harder to find programs that are suitable for our kids to watch other than Disney Channel. For example, American Idol. You'd think that would be ok. But no, you have two judges (both female) pretending to kiss each other passionately during the tryouts. There's other innuendo during the show that is starting to get a bit out of hand as well. Other shows like Survivor and Dancing with the Stars are shows that we like to watch but some of the language on them we don't want our kids hearing. It makes me uncomfortable every sime someone uses bad language. We used to be able to turn down the sound and put the words on (subtitles). But now both our kids can read so that isn't an option.
I know that we can't protect and isolate our kids forever, but ours are only 9 and 6 years old right now. Our son is still at the stage where he doesn't understand all the sexual comments and innuendo but our daughter just recently learned about the changes coming in her life and what sex is. We have tried to explain to her the specialness of sex between a husband and wife and what it means, but it makes our "job" tougher when there is so attention to sex on TV and it doesn't match up with what we taught her. It really hit me hard the other day when we were watching some show and an ad for "How I Met Your Mother" came on. In the ad, the main character was bragging that he had just had sex with his 200th woman. Of course, it generated a question from our daughter and we had to explain that that wasn't what sex is all about - how many partners can you have. It's frustrating as a parent that we try to teach our kids good morals and to do the right thing and the media goes and promotes the opposite.
And don't even get me started about the internet! So far, we've been lucky and haven't had to deal with that with our kids yet. Remember parents, you are the biggest influence on your kids - whether you like it our not. Set a good example for your kids and use situations like TV shows or movies or whatever as opportunites to teach them right from wrong.
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