Thursday Thirteen

What can I say? I'm a joiner. So here's my Thursday Thirteen. CAUTION FOR NEW VIEWERS. I'm pretty much always sarcastic. Thirteen Reasons to let your kids watch television 1. Floam. If it weren’t for TV, we wouldn’t have floam art all over the house. Did you know that it sticks to EVERYTHING? Did you know that you can let it harden and keep it forever? Thank you, floam vendors, for pitching yourself so well on Nickelodeon. 2. Birds and Bees. You know, if it weren’t for Animal Planet, I would never have heard my seven year old discussing the mating habits of [insert any animal you wish – they cover them all eventually.] 3. Language development. Crikey! (Crocodile Hunter). Mother of Pearl, Fire on the Poop Deck (Spongebob, of course). I’m goin’ ghost (Danny Phantom). There are so many I’ll just leave it at that. 4. Excellent taste in music. De-de-de-de-de-Dora. De-de-de-de-de-Dora. 5. Restful activity. Unchecked, mine could sit in a television coma for hours. Just think how rested up her muscles could get. 6. The information highway. What’s better than finding your kid watching an entire infomercial about thighmaster or whatever. Animal Planet has infomercials in the morning. Who knew? Now my daughter can worry about all manner of personal failings and plot new ways to spend her allowance. Who needs to wait for puberty? 7. Realistic expectations. It’s important for kids to understand that if their parents don’t buy them that Wacky Wigged Out Slime Spewing Jackass Doll, their parents don’t love them. Life’s hard. Get over it, kid. 8. Enhanced family dynamics. If you do let your child watch television, your conversations with disapproving family members get much livelier. Why agree to disagree when you can argue the educational benefits of watching The Animal Kingdom’s Most Extreme Farters or whatever. 9. Dressing themselves. If it weren’t for commercial breaks, Girlie would never have learned to dress herself in thirty-second increments. 10. Telling time. “I’ll clean my room after two more episodes, Mommy.” Such a smartie! 11. Nutrition. Quick as a monkey, Girlie can tell you the calcium benefits of Nesquick. Need I say more? 12. Multi-tasking. Thanks to television, kids no longer develop that annoying habit of reading a book all afternoon. “Put that book down and come have dinner.” Nope. Now they can watch and eat at the same time. 13. Attention span. Watching television finely tunes their attention skills. Where we might want to look at an image for longer than a nanosecond, they are all over the zip of information. Imagine how fast they can take in an art museum? Amazing. And I’ll bet you thought that I was going to talk about the built-in babysitter benefit of an engrossing TV show. Wrongo. But that is where it all starts, isn’t it? I was being pretty sarcastic here but in truth, I'm neither for or against TV. Anything in moderation. Except informercials. Those things must die. Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

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