Won’t you be his neighbor?

Mr. Rogers was always one of my favorites when I was little. Now that I have my own children who are a creaping over 10 yrs old, we don’t watch alot of the ‘baby shows’ as my youngest calls them. Confession: When I’m flipping through the stations, if I see an old Seasame Street, Mr. Rogers, or Winnie the Pooh on I stop and watch for a few moments. I think of my own childhood and then remember sharing those programs with my kids at various points. It makes me wish they were 3 or 4 again.

I don’t think we are in a time period of violent shows as I grew up with plenty of violent shows when I was a kid through the 80’s. I don’t see them as violent as much as they are just “the good shows.” Transformers, GI Joe, Star Wars, etc…were the things to watch and play with cause they were good. There’s probably just as many violent shows these days as there were back then…but in my opinion, the new ones aren’t as good. Transformer and GI Joe remakes recently as newer cartoons have been horrendous.

I also watch Mr Rogers, Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, etc…but I can guarantee you those aren’t the shows we talked about with our friends. I do get that you have to watch out for certain shows and make sure you are on top of your kids if they are not able to handle it. Some kids can, and we have no issues letting our 3 year old watch Transformers/GI Joe/Star Wars. On the other hand, I know of a few kids the same age that are more prone to violent behavior and some of their parents don’t let them watch the same shows for fear of feeding the fire.

I thinks it comes down to each child and the parents choice in what they want to allow. Aisha, your question about going back to the days of JUST Mr. Rogers - Ugh. Not much fun. I don’t think it is an either/or question though. I’d rather have both.