Tag: Television

Dean Blackburn’s answer to: “What are the best TV series for 1-2 year olds?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

Cooking Shows are an often-overlooked option. Nice in that they are not generally "serials", usually last around 20 minutes without commercials, and show young children not just a wide variety of foods and preparation methods, but also help them understand how what winds up on their plate got there. As everyone knows, the foods on these shows seem to burst with eye-grabbing color, almost impossibly so. Anyway, kids love that!

Gardening Shows, similarly, can be quite good, "low impact" shows, for similar reasons.

During those brief periods of non-wartime, allowing them to see/hear some of what's on the news (in any country besides the United States) can also be a positive experience, especially once they start "axing questions".

As Jameson Quinn said, 1-2 is a bit young for TV in general, but keeping them away from ongoing series as much as possible (except, perhaps, Baby Sign Language instructional videos) is the best way to "trickle in" TV, so that it doesn't become FAR more addictive in later years.

Now that my girl is 3, our regular shows include Doctor Who (TV series) (lots of simpler/pseudo science to discuss, high degrees of creativity and imagination in the plots, and none of the old monsters/effects are very scary to kids these days), Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (some of those topics/themes are pretty dark, but the show was pretty spot-on for pacing, language, and content for the 3-6 set), and Pucca (long story how that started, but with each animated episode lasting only 8 minutes, can be a great "negotiation show" when there isn't enough time before school/lunch/bed).

I think any age below 4-5 is probably too young for solo television/movie watching for children. If they aren't watching with a parent, or at least a couple peers, then the TV watching experience becomes the "dreaded babysitter", rather than a potential conversation starter during or after a given show. With that as your guideline, I suggest the following:

Let your child watch only those shows you would be happy to sit and watch with him/her.

Finally, let me also advise checking in now and then when content may seem too advanced for your child, they start to squirm, or you're concerned it might give them nightmares. If they respond that they're not scared, bored, or otherwise need to be elsewhere (TV can be more interesting sometimes than dry pants, for example), then trust their judgment.

What are the best TV series for 1-2 year olds?

Deano’s answer to: “Why do parents let their kids watch Star Wars at such a young age (4-7 years old, for example)? Isn’t all the Darth Vader / killing stuff psychologically not good for little kids?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

My daughter is currently rolling along just fine with old Tom Baker Doctor Who episodes… Which fall around the same era/level of violence. Based on her total lack of reaction to the violence and “scary monsters”, I’ve settled on her turning three as the time most appropriate to opening the original trilogy can of worms.

Far more than the content, though, is HOW it is consumed. When she watched Ghostbusters the first time, we stopped it twice when it got too scary – and we talked through the story whenever she was confused or had questions. We do the same with Doctor Who, and now she’s the one explaining the basics of time travel to mommy whenever we’re watching a 20 minute episode while waiting for dinner to come out of the oven.

Watch it with your kids, watch their reactions, and be ready with a pause or stop when things need explaining, or get to be overwhelming. And yeah, if they start having nightmares, or freaking out their teachers/fellow students at school, maybe tone things down for a bit. 😉

UPDATE:

After her birthday, my daughter was home sick from preschool for a few days, and we went ahead and tested the waters, watching Star Wars. I told her as we started, and consistently during the tense parts of the movie, that she could let me know, or just turn away from the screen if it got too scary.

Her thoughts on Star Wars:

  • the only things that are definitively killed are robots (Storm Troopers, droids) bugs (Greedo) and maybe Obi-Wan Kenobi (though she also theorized that he simply jumped out of his clothes, and was running around the Death Star naked).
  • Darth Vader dresses a lot like Batman, and might be a ninja.
  • “When the orange guys go ‘pew-pew’ on the skeletons house, and they fly in the hole, and then the other man and his doggy comes in and scares away Darth Vader and he spins and spins, and then and then it all goes boom and the doggy doesn’t get a medal from Princess Leia.†“

In short, kids often make different connections with narrative works, and Star Wars is no different. Where you may see a movie depicting at various points

  • planetary genocide,
  • good guys shooting first (if you still watch on VHS, anyway),
  • and of course adults playing in wet garbage,

it’s more likely that your kids are seeing something else (okay, they probably also see the garbage thing, and are plotting how to replicate it on trash day using the garden hose and a city sanitation vehicle). The key job for you as a parent, is to understand what it is they see, and help “nudge” their potentially harmful interpretations back on track.

Again, as I mentioned prior to my update, it’s much more important that whatever you let young children watch, you watch together. Even something seemingly innocuous like the Berenstain Bears(*) can off “go off the rails”, or significantly diverge from what you would consider “healthy messaging” on a given topic, so simply looking for and relying on a movie rating or age advisory is bad, lazy parenting, and often worse than letting your kids see fictional battle stations housing thousands of living beings blow up to the cheers of the protagonists.

(* see: http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008… for the proof)

(† that part still pisses me off, every time, and she noticed it too! Made me so proud…)

This answer originally appeared on Quora: Why do parents let their kids watch Star Wars at such a young age (4-7 years old, for example)? Isn’t all the Darth Vader / killing stuff psychologically not good for little kids?

Deano’s answer to: “During TV and movie credits, what does it mean when an actor has ‘as X’ after their name?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

The opening credits on TV shows(*) work very similarly to those in the movies – it’s just that absolutely no one cares who wrote on directed a TV show, pretty much ever. 😉

With notable exceptions, like all-alphabetical listing, the order the stars appear in is negotiated like everything else as part of their contract. The particular placement the querent refers to, however, is special – it’s the equivalent in TV terms of the “marquee spot” – that spot usually reserved before the movie title to mention a particularly well known star, etc.

Pretty much everything about Mark Hughes‘ answer is correct as far as the many many whys of how someone ends up with the spot – for the newcomer who is being pushed as “studio product”, it may be the name recognition angle. For a recurring role played by a big name, it’s the glory of the last spot itself… And many times, it’s just whoever fought for it the hardest.

Ironically, if you read some of the stories about who gets what in both TV and movie credits (dig, dig, dig, they are out there online, but it’s easier to find in actor/show biographies, for sure), you start to dig up some really interesting behind the scenes gossip – many times, taking the “with… as…” spot meant giving up a bit of salary, or some other perk… But oh how glorious it must be, all these years later, to show up like a phantom as the last thing viewers see in the opening sequence… I definitely think whoever gets that spot laughs loudest, longest, and best compared to their on-set nemeses – who may have been better paid, appeared in more episodes, hand more lines, input on stories, etc.

(technically, we’re just talking title sequences, as a lot of modern shows and movies either skip opening credits, or just run text credits in-frame while ACT I “starts cold” (which is, in the end, better for the viewer, it means we get that many more minutes of show back from the bean counters who somehow like to think of an hour as consisting of what’re we down to these days, 42 minutes?!?)

During TV and movie credits, what does it mean when an actor has “as X” after their name?