Kiddos mom sent her to me with a new stuffed animal. It was a prayer bunny, I push the button and it says something like "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep and let the angels..." What? Thats not the prayer my parents told me it ended with "and if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." That's right at five years old I'm basically telling the Lord, "hey man if I pass away tonight in my sleep, go ahead and bring me up there please." Of course at the time, that didn't register to me, and it's kind of funny now, but what group got ahold of this prayer and decided to sanitize it?
This got me thinking what the hell else is being sanitized for kids these days and who is on a mission to turn them into a bunch of pansies. Then I look at my kids books, the titles these days are ridiculous. "Pinkalicous", "Super Princess Cupcake Day", "Happy Flowers and Sunbeams", "Everybody Gets A Trophy!" Ok so I made a few of those titles up, but seriously kids books are STOOPID these days. Trust me, I read a ton of them. So I found some Madeline books that I bought at a garage sale that were pretty old. We cracked it open the other night. This girl lives in a orphanage and in this particular episode of this series, the orphanage dog drowns, in front of the orphans, they get a new one and it gets taken away by the orphanage police. I mean no some princess has a party with her dolls and learns an important lesson. These orphan girls dog drowned, take that Pinkalicious! What your best friend can't come to your cupcake party? Boohoo. I'm not saying I want to raise a jaded little kiddo, but how about a more realistic one?
So I'm going to continue the tradtion of asking the Lord above not to take us in our sleep and incorporate some more kids books from back in the day. I'm pretty sure all those kids played in competition sports leagues, didn't have to wear leashes in public, and their parents didn't overly obssess about every detail of their kids lives. If anything, I think it will give kiddo a bit of an edge to make a decision on her own when she needs it in a tough situation and her parents aren't around. Instead of crying for mommy or daddy like the rest of the pansies.
Lol, my daughter has the same bear! It's voice is really creepy too. But I agree things have been WAY too sanitized and PC-ified for my kids' generation. But when I read the princess classics I have to laugh sometimes at the wicked stepmothers (who do really exist) and prince charmings (who do not as far as I can tell). How did all that impact us?
ReplyDeleteMy daughters favorite stories now are the ones we make up!
"Everybody Gets A Trophy!" - hahahahahaha!!!
ReplyDeleteI tell my kids, tug of war is no fun unless your opponent pulls like hell, so give them hell yourself. Pull!
And the winner gets the trophy, dammit. They earned it.
Haha, this entry really made me laugh !
ReplyDeleteThere's WAY too much sanitization going on out there.
ReplyDeleteBut not at *my* house, dammit.
I want to raise girls who think for themselves. And while I agree with allowing kids to be kids, a healthy dose of reality doesn't strip that from them.
"If you ain't first, you're last..."
ReplyDelete- Ricky Bobby
Thanks for the comments guys, it is a fine line we walk as parents, I'm just trying to find the middle and be able to laugh about it along the way.
ReplyDelete