Ben is now coming up to 18months old and to date we have kept him away from TV. However now we would be grateful if he would watch something for, say 10 minutes just to give us a break. Perhaps just long enough to get a cup of tea.
This morning as I was having my breakfast, I turned over to BBC2 to find Bob the Builder, and seeing as a couple of Bob’s construction vehicles look a bit like tractors, Ben was rapt and stood, pointing and laughing as Bob built a drive-in cinema.
However it did bother me greatly that Bob was using illegal scaffolding practices. The handrail was only a single bar and there was no kickplate to prevent tools being knocked over the side where they could cause serious injury… RIDDORs are just waiting to happen.
And it’s this kind of slackmanship that keeps me from letting Ben watch television. What kind of parent would allow their child to grow up learning unsafe construction practices? I mean who knows what bad habits he can learn from Fireman Sam, let alone the haphazard driving demonstrated in Roary?
In all honesty I am very annoyed and disappointed in the BBC in this respect. I would write a letter of complaint but I hear that Postman Pat is on strike…!
October 28th, 2007 at 12:32 am
I know a lot of parents who would think that doesn’t matter - “It’s only a children’s programme” - but I think it’s very important to pick up on these things, more important for our children’s success in the world than many parents realise. I can recall many an occasion when my children were little and I was watching TV with them that I was so irritated by that kind of slackmanship I felt compelled to comment along the lines of “Of course, what would happen in real life is …”. I continued that from children’s programmes to soaps - which I loathe with a passion because all the characters are deliberately made incompetent so that problems are never solved and storylines can be strung out indefinitely to fill air time. “Do not make these idiots your role models!”
Btw, I can still remember all the words to the Postman Pat song from when I used to watch that with my now grown up daughter. Which is a bit sad really! LOL