Just this morning, I was reading an excellent op-ed in Newsday, the Long Island, New York newspaper. A writer friend of mine, Claudia Copquin, wrote about Rudolph. I’ll put the link here for those of you who may be Newsday subscribers or Optimum Online customers (which you have to be, dang it, to get access), but for the rest of you, here’s the gist: A professor at a local university came out with a self-published e-book called “No More Bullies at the North Pole,” contending that all the adult figures in the 1964 holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are guilty of such poor behavior and example-setting that, I presume, we should shield our kids from it.

Claudia writes that the professor, George Giuliani of CW Post College, feels that the Rudolph story…

…promotes bullying. He also points to incidents of sexism, favoritism, exclusion and hypocritical behavior in the holiday classic.

That Rudolph, with his nose so bright, becomes a hero by leading Santa’s reindeer on a foggy night is no matter to Professor George Giuliani, who claims that this isn’t a cute little story. The rampant use of the word “misfit” aimed at Rudolph sends the wrong message to vulnerable children.

And heaven forbid we ever, ever send the wrong message to children. So as I was telling Claudia in a Facebook comment, a lightbulb went off when I read her wonderful op-ed. Didn’t I write about this very subject, right here, last year? So off I went to check,and as it turns out, I did. But it was two years ago.

In the spirit of the holiday, I’m re-gifting my December, 2009 post: Enjoy!

Rudolph and His Dad: Why Donner Would Never Be Allowed to Call His Son a Misfit Today

(originally posted here, December 8, 2009)

 

The other day, on impulse at the supermarket, I picked up the DVD of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for the boys. They hadn’t seen it yet, even though it’s been on TV. Both of them are rehearsing holiday songs for their school concerts, so it’s been a nonstop chorus of Rudolph over here, and I figured it was better to own the dang thing than to sit through commercials.

So we watched. And while James tucked his head under a blanket whenever the Bumble came on the screen, and Daniel laughed over my favorite character, Yukon Cornelius, I was taken back in time to the 70s, remembering watching with my sister on the oval braided rug in the den (small time-travel aside here: did others of you raised in the 1970s do all your TV-watching on the floor/rug, rather than the couch? Did the couch in your house, as in mine, have an “adults only” vibe? Weird).

The story is full of you’d-never-see-that-on-TV-today oddities. And I’m not talking about laughable “special effects” or the way the characters’ mouth movements never match their dialog. I’m talking about a reindeer father who is awfully mean to his misfit, red-nosed son, entreating him to hide his differences and fit in. Then what does the dad do, when he realizes his shunned and ridiculed child has run off? He mans up and goes after him, telling his anxious wife to stay in the cave, not for the sensible reason that Rudolph might come back, but because going out in the storm to search is “man’s work.”

Then there’s poor Hermey, the misfit elf who wants to be a dentist. His stand-in father is the head elf, who rages at his “son” who wants to be anything other than what he’s supposed to be. He, too, apologizes in the end and lets Hermey set up a North Pole dental practice, but his original sin — fatherly non-acceptance — is one that you’d never see in kids’ fictional fare today.

Last night, I was on the phone with my sister, and we talked about the show. I said, “If that were made today, the message would be ‘celebrate your differences,’ not, ‘shun the misfits.’ ” And sure, that’s eventually the lesson that’s learned in Rudolph, but the key difference is that before Rudolph can realize his oddity makes him special, he first has to be disparaged and cast out, not just by his peers, but by his own father. In the end, forgiveness is instant. And you get the idea that no one needs therapy.

Did we just miss that part as kids? No, we really didn’t, as my sister pointed out.  “We knew the father, and even Santa, was mean to Rudolph,” she said. And we pretty much thought, ‘well, that’s the way it is.’ ” And then we got on with our day.

Today, however, that show wouldn’t be made because we couldn’t stand the idea of our kids being shown a less-than-ideal parent while they were watching a TV show or movie. Sure, we’ll allow them to be temporarily frightened when the Bumble roars or, King Kong-like, grasps a struggling doe in his giant paw. We can allow them the temporary anxiety of wondering if Yukon makes it out alive, or if Christmas will be canceled like a flight out of O’Hare. Scary is acceptable.

What’s not acceptable any longer are adults who get it wrong, then apologize in the end, as Donner does to Rudolph after he saves Christmas. TV and movie parents don’t screw up. They make cookies and laugh indulgently and otherwise remain more or less benignly in the background as their kids (whether they’re reindeer, pigs, turtles or little bears) mess up, make messes, and sometimes learn lessons. But they’d never, ever, ever call their child a misfit. Even if they said they were sorry.

Back in the 70s, on that braided rug, safe in the paneled walls of our den, with our parents behind us on the couch, my sister and I watched, got scared, then felt good again, and my folks didn’t give a second thought to the negative depiction of parenthood in this once-yearly bit of holiday fun. They just yawned and sent us to off to bed.

Why do we seem to believe, as my sister pointed out, that our kids can’t comprehend and mentally manage the fact that sometimes parents aren’t perfectly nice, that they mess up and apologize, sometimes over and over for the same crimes? Why don’t we give them that credit? Why, instead do we give them entertainment that whitewashes parents into mistake-free creations that the kids run roughshod over?

Back then, Donner could apologize with a manly clanking of his antlers. Today, he’d be getting a visit from the Department of Children’s Services. Or, more likely, he’d have started out being the kind of dad who gave his misfit son a sentimental lecture on how that red nose made Rudolph special.

Apparently, fictional parents are no longer allowed to bumble their way to the right thing. They have to be perfect from the get-go.

What do you think?

My kids' new best friend. Will he make them fat and violent?

Starting this week (and hopefully continuing because it turns out to be wildly successful!), I’m instituting Mean Mom’s Question Time. Because I got to thinking: I can write (and write, and write, and write), but I’d rather discuss sometimes. So. Here’s the topic for Week One of Mean Mom’s Question Time:

How much TV do your kids watch?

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends no boob tube for babies and toddlers under age 2, and a limited amount thereafter. Baby “education” DVD and video creators tried to get around this by touting their products as not-TV (think, HBO for kids; you know how HBO says, “it’s not TV, it’s HBO”?). But that bubble got a pin in it last year when the big mama of this multi-gazillion-dollar business, Baby Einstein, agreed to pay back parents who felt their babies didn’t get smarter after all.

Just today, I saw yet another article citing a study suggesting that children who watch TV a lot at age 2 don’t do quite as well at, well, life when they’re a bit older (in this study’s case, fourth grade). We’ve all seen lots of studies about how TV makes kids more violent, or less smart, or fatter, or more likely to eat crappy food and drink sugary (or high-fructose-corn-syrupy) soda.

You know, I buy it. I do. And I also don’t buy it. Why?

Well, put simply, my kids have watched TV since they were little, and at ages 5 and 7, they’re both smart, and normal, and not obese or violent at all.

Truth be told, until this very year, they never watched commercial TV. They just got into SpongeBob SquarePants, and by “got into” I mean “have become completely obsessed with.” Before this year,  they progressed from (yes, I know) Baby Einstein videos and Sesame Street, to years of total devotion to Noggin, to a brief detour into Playhouse Disney (think Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Handy Manny, and Tigger & Pooh).

But now they love, love, love SpongeBob and Jimmy Neutron and Fairly Odd Parents, and even (though I swore I’d never tell), they’ll watch a little iCarly (if SpongeBob is on next, say). And so, not coincidentally, I suddenly hear things like this out of my boys’ mouths:

Can we get Apple Jacks? It’s part of a complete breakfast!

and,

Mom! Mom! You have to get this stuff, you spray it on the bathroom, and it’s white and bubbles up, and you wipe it off and it’s all clean!

But here’s the thing. I have told them (and I’ll continue to tell them, as many times as I can squish it into a conversation) that these crazy things called commercials exist solely to make stuff you can buy look so amazingly good you want to buy it, but you don’t have to, and really, it’s not all that. It looks better than it is, and anyway, Mom’s not getting you Apple Jacks, full stop.

And you know what? They get it. They get (with a “we’re smarter than the average bear” attitude that, frankly, I enjoy fostering) that falling for the lure of commercials is something other people do. But not us.

Also they don’t get it. That is, they don’t get the Apple Jacks. They also don’t get soda. That’s the bit in those nearly annual studies about how TV makes kids fat and violent that I genuinely don’t understand: That kids who watch too much TV are more likely to drink too much soda. Well, OK, but who’s buying the soda?

I do understand, of course, the relationship between watching TV and not doing other things that can stimulate the mind and exercise the body. But I’m in control of (a) how much TV the boys watch (and I’m not 100% strict about that, surprising as that might seem; the days and hours vary according to my mood, their mood, and how busy I am with other things — gasp! It’s true!; and (b) what food and drinks inhabit our fridge and pantry. Also, we ride bikes, take walks, play in the park, go to our soccer games, and read lots and lots of books.

But we also watch TV. (Wait, I do have one rule. No TV after dinner; that’s mom’s time, after the dishes are done but before it’s bath/bed/book time, to watch House Hunters International, though they do sometimes enjoy watching that with me, and guessing which beachside condo or breathtaking, jealousy-inducing casita the inexplicably wealthy family from England or Canada or California are buying in Turks & Caicos or wherever).

I’m not making excuses. I read the studies and I make my own choices. I watched a lot of TV as a kid, as I remember. I’m neither fat nor stupid nor violent. Is there something inherently wrong with passive entertainment, sometimes? SpongeBob can be pretty funny. So can House Hunters International.

OK, so here’s my question: How much TV do your kids watch, or did they watch as babies/toddlers? What do you think of studies that link (though not as a direct cause, but a link, they’re always careful to say) TV with less intellectual capacity and poorer health?

Are you satisfied with your choices, your rules (or lack thereof)? Are you conflicted?

Let me know! Ask your friends! Let’s get the conversation started.

Who wouldn't want to spend time with Little Bear? Maybe Mother Bear made a cake!

The latest I hear about the basic-cable TV channel Noggin (“It’s like preschool on TV!”) is that it’s now called Nick, Jr.

Can commercials be far behind?

My husband and I (well, my husband, actually) stumbled upon Noggin while flipping through the many upper (as in, above 100) channels we have in our cable system. He happened to land on Noggin when it was airing a show no longer on the air that was a condensed version of Sesame Street (how it crossed over from PBS to Noggin, owned by Nickelodeon, we don’t know, but it caught our then-toddler’s attention). Then we realized that the channel was on all day, from 6 am to 6pm; that all the shows were slightly less than 30 minutes long; and that in between programs, rather than commercials, there were little interludes of music, or of Noggin-created characters Moose and Zee doing little preschool-esque lessons.

And so began our love affair with Little Bear, Little Bill, Backyardigans, Miffy and Maisy; our love-hate relationship with Franklin and Lazy Town, Dora and Diego, and The Wonder Pets; and our WTF is this? reaction to Wow, Wow, Wubbzy and Yo, Gabba Gabba.

I’m going to make an admission here, and I should also start setting aside a little money every month for my sons’ therapy later in life because of it: My kids, almost 7 and almost 5, still watch Noggin. (I mean, Nick, Jr.) Sure, it’s less of a pull than it used to be, but let’s face it: it’s preschool on TV! And my older guy is in sophisticated second grade!

Yet here’s what happens when I venture aloud to Daniel, the big guy, “you know, Daniel, maybe you’re too old for Little Bear.”

He gets upset with me.

And why not? Little Bear — as my dad said when he was over our house when it was on, and everyone ended up leaving the den but him, and when I came back I found him still watching and told him he could have changed the channel: “It’s a nice show.”

It IS nice. Oh, my husband and I make jokes about how one day the Bear family is going to realize their true nature and devour Hen and Duck, and there is of course endless mirth to be made out of Uncle Rusty (he emerges every now and then to help build a cabin or something, but mostly he seems to live in the woods, where there’s possibly a gay bar for bears, and Granny, Emily’s grandmother, who is drawn — on purpose? uncanny coincidence? — to look exactly like Barbara Bush.

But it’s sweet, and calming, and — best of all — it’s good for kids without being all in-your-face educational, which always comes off smarmy (think Dora. Shudder). It just is what it is, 25 minutes spent in a little forest glade with animals that talk and are good friends with each other and a little girl who spends summers in the woods with her grandmother.

Like Seinfeld, there’s no annoying growth or learning. Instead, there are cupcakes, and fish stew, and lemonade. And flights of fancy where the gang pretend-travels to the North Pole. And a giant moose, and a strange, wise frog, and Father Bear, in his dapper suit while at home, and in his Gorton’s Fisherman yellow raincoat when out on his boat, battling the wind, catching fish, and visiting foreign ports (oh, and rescuing a whale! That Father Bear!).

Thing is, I’ve never been in a giant hurry to push my boys to the “next step” in children’s entertainment. Because the “next step” inevitably involves action figures, commercials for cereal, candy and toys, and, well, the next step after that. I know parents who automatically shepherd their younger and younger kids to movies that aren’t made for them (but are instead made for the same cohort all commercial movies are made for these days: teenage boys, and young men).

My question is, once your kid’s watched Kung Fu Panda (which I did take the boys to; they didn’t like it. “Why do they keep fighting?” asked James), he’s not coming home and watching Little Bear. He wants the next thing, and that’s…. what? An Adam Sandler movie?

My kids (and I swear, it’s not because I restrict their access; I may be mean, but I don’t have a problem with TV, confident as I am that they do plenty else aside from watching it, and hey, I turned out okay!) have no idea who Ben 10 is, or Avatar (and frankly neither do I). If they’re happy with our friend the Bear, or with Handy Manny, or WorldWorld, or Curious George, or even the strange and wonderful residents of the Island of Sodor, who am I to tell them that most of their peers are watching the Star Wars movies, or Transformers?

And like I said, their interest in Noggin (oops, Nick, Jr.) is definitely waning. I’m not upset to see the back of Wubbzy (which gives me the same kind of get-me-out-of-here desperate feeling as when I’m trapped in phone-tree hell, or have a computer virus) or D.J. Lance of Yo Gabba Gabba. But I am sorta sorry to see Little Bear fade from our house.

I know my boys won’t remain in this bubble of TV innocence much longer, but I’m grateful to that bear family in the woods (and even supremely annoying Moose and Zee) for fending it off a bit longer.

Now, who’s up for some lemonade and cupcakes?