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Sesame Street, bad for my child?

Sesame Street, bad for my child?

In today's world...

I was amazed to hear the news reporter quip "there's a warning about Sesame Street, it might not be good for your child", then went to commercial! Don't you just love it when they do that?! Then you hang on til they come back and read the story at the end of the next half hour!

It's not really the current episodes of Sesame Street that are bad for your children, it's the versions from 40 or so years ago. There are now Volumes I & II out on DVD that features story-lines, or skits that might not be suitable for your child to see because it might let them do or believe the wrong thing! So the producers have put a warning lable on them.

One of the scenes on the DVD is a stranger met little "Sally" (not the right name) on the road and took her home to meet his wife. While Sally did not go inside their house, she stayed outside, and the couple were very friendly and nice, then the wife invited Sally to come back to visit with them again. Do you see what's wrong with that picture? Yep, 'stranger danger" the warnings that we now give our children, back in 1969, that was not necessary to do! In today's world it is!

There is a scene of Cookie Monster gobbling up, quite greedily, some cookies; the children might get the wrong impression and think that being obsessed with sweet, sugary cookies is a good thing! In today's world it's not! Childhood obesity is a very big (pardon the pun) and ugly problem these days!

Oscar the Grouch is very depressed and quite angry in one scene. You remember how Oscar is right? The grouchy, curmudgeonly character that we used to get a laugh from because of his grumpy antics? Not cute and funny anymore! In today's world, Oscar is considered manic depressive and that is not a good thing for children to see! We don't want them to know that people do have good and bad days!

Back in the day, when my siblings and I used to sit down and watch with avid adoration those little muppets and puppets and people on that beloved show, we didn't worry about stuff like that! It wasn't necessary then, but it is now, in today's world!

It's a sad state of affairs indeed!"
10,652 views 29 replies
Reply #26 Top
By the way, my four-year-old son is now reading and writing, no thanks to anything on TV! Whoopeeee! But I confess that we're suckers for the internet. PBSkids.org is absolutely terrific. Especially WordGirl and Wayne's Word. It's inspired us to play spontaneous games like Word Jousting. He'll come at me with a "sword" and shout the first part of a word (like,"CR!"), then I come back at him with the other half of the word ("ASH!"), then we move in closer and closer until we meet and yell out the word together, ("CRASH!"). Of course we plan the word ahead of time before we start jousting so we both know how it'll go. It's all fun. OK, so we only did that once. But it was cool because he started it, and I can see that he's feeling the magic of literacy!


Yeah! My daughter and I go on the Internet too. She loves PBSkids and her teacher gave us websites to go on as well!



Leave Sesame Street alone... Next they'll be asking Disney to put pants on Mickey and Donald... Wankers...


! They probably did but we haven't heard about it...yet!



quote]Irony: The people who complain about Oscar are just like him.
Green, bitchy muppets that live in trash cans?

!!
Reply #27 Top
She loves PBSkids and her teacher gave us websites to go on as well!
End of quote


Ooh, would you mind sharing some of the other sites? My son loves that stuff  :D 
Reply #28 Top
Ooh, would you mind sharing some of the other sites? My son loves that stuff


Sure! Although the ones she goes on are for class room practices, learning and recognizing letters and words and such. You need a password & log in which the teacher gave me and I changed to my own.

I'll check to see. She also uses the websites for most of those children's programs like Authur, and Barbie. I'll see what I can find and we can compare notes!
Reply #29 Top
When I was going to college for my Ed degree, one of the books we had to read had a chapter on Sesame Street. I don't remember much about it now, but I do remember it had talked about how lots of children who watch it are sort of parked there by their parents for the TV to be the babysitter. If you watch the show, youll notice lots of mini-scenes and no skits (or whatever they are called) that are that long...so lots of constant short skits...they said that children who watch it are more likelty to develop ADHD because of the constant switching...sort of gets the brain into that pattern.