Monday, November 26, 2007

In Which Daughter Demonstrates the Annoying Influences of the Media

It would seem that my dear four-year-old daughter absorbs far too much media advertising during these days of shopping, shopping, shopping, and all the holiday hoopla. I really can't figure out the source from which she absorbs this stuff. She is only allowed an hour of tv per day, up to two hours on an off day or on a dreary, cold, or rainy day. This "tv time" consists of the Noggin Network or PBS or a kid-friendly video. I never have the tv on outside of this time except after the kids are in bed. It would be pointless anyway, as the kids would hijack the tube as quickly as they hijack my jacuzzi bath. And so Dear Daughter gets virtually zero television commercials (except when I'm away at work and Husband indulges the kids in SpongeBob on Nickelodeon). Daughter, in fact, never experienced a single television commercial until sometime during the past year, and when she finally was exposed to them, they really agitated her! She would be in the middle of a show and suddenly a commercial would break through and she would come unglued wondering what happened to her show and when it would be back. She would whine and nag and cry until the show returned, so it's not like she was even listening to them. And yet somehow, she absorbs this stuff from somewhere.

As I was driving this morning, I listened to her chattering away from the middle row of the family mobile. She was jabbering about some "make believe" toy that she was conjuring up in her head. She was very clear with me that this was not a "real" toy, but just one that she was "imagining." Her description went on for several minutes in great detail. I confess, I had begun to tune out and was instead thinking about the tasks on my "to do" list for the day. Then I heard her voice kind of trail off and there was a brief pause before she punctuated her narrative with a matter-of-fact, "Batteries not included."

4 comments:

Tracy Rambles On And On said...

You had me laughing so hard with this one! My center child is the exact same way. She can hear something once and it will stick with her. It's great when the electric is out. She once recited the whole Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for us in a power outage!
She too loves commercials. One day we were walking through the cleaning isle of the grocery store and she saw a mr. clean magic eraser. She was so excited. She ran through all of the wonderful things about it and what surfaces you can use it on. Then she got really upset with me when I didn't buy one!

MGM said...

Tracy,
Mr. Clean erasers rock! You totally should have bought one (or four)! They are one of the few items that the commercials are right on about.

My daughter could recite the entire Cat in the Hat story by 26 months of age.

Sounds like it would be a good time to get our daughter's together.

Proto said...

radio commercials?

MGM said...

Proto,
This would be tv commercials. Commercials of the radio type are rare in a moving vehicle in this family as the wee ones dominate the stereo with with their CD's. That's another story for another day.