Why you should (not) feel guilty about using the electronic babysitter

Let's face it. All the research shows that kids watching TV is a negative thing. It makes them less able to pay attention, destroys family dinners, and gives them nightmares. It decreases literacy rates and increases your chances of buying their cute little overalls in the "husky" section. Instead, you should be taking kids for walks to local parks and trading the Happy Meals for steamed organic vegetables from your garden.

It must be nice.

On the other hand, I am a single mom with two kids who works a million hours a week, sometimes two million, and lacks funds for a housekeeper, gardener, or chauffer. I still take my kids (Boy, age 3, and Girl, age 1) to the park when it's not raining and somebody isn't throwing up. With two sets of diapers still to change (come on, son! let's finish this thing!), a weedy lawn to mow, broken water heaters to fix, a rickety car, and a serious reading habit, sometimes I need the electronic babysitter.

Let's put it this way: If not for the electronic babysitter, there would be no dinner at my house. There would be no clean dishes. Groceries would stay in the plastic bags, and puddles of melted ice cream would form around them. There would be no time for checking under the bed for long-forgotten sippy cups of curdling milk, and I could sell my vacuum cleaner. I'm telling you--the TV is an important tool for distracting my otherwise hyperactive children into a temporary state of peace. It doesn't last long, so I use it strategically.

However, as an English professor who often hears ranting about general moral decay due to a proliferation of non-readers, -writers, and -imaginers, I use the electronic babysitter with a wee bit of guilt. My successful rationalization is thus: 1) when I was a kid, I glutted myself on television AND books, so literacy and Brady Bunch re-runs aren't mutually exclusive, 2) my kids are gaining a cultural/media literacy that us just undervalued, that's all, 3) I only let them watch really good movies. This last point is why you should read the blog. I will be giving advice on how to pick a really good kid's movie from a "expert, literary" point of view. (Both of those descriptors should be taken with a healthy dose of salt).

Qualities of good kid's films are the same as that of literature:

1) good characters

2) good plots

3) pertinent, universal themes

4) stirs the imagination (creative, innovative)

5) excellent details (dialogue, art, and otherwise)

I'll add a few more criteria just for kids movies:

6) they are good to "re-watch" many times

7) they are good for both the kids and the parents

8) they are applicable to daily life and learning