It’s hot! It’s sharp! It’s poisonous! It’s dangerous! It was so easy when they were little.
But the older my kids get, dangerous gets a little more ambiguous.
Can music be dangerous? Movies? A computer?
Yes, yes and yes! It takes a lot of monitoring—and I am just not a detail person. Then I heard this speaker. She was younger than me and didn’t even have kids – but she worked with them. She said, “I talk to a lot of parents that are so worried about what their kids are watching and listening to. They all seem so helpless about what to do about it. This baffles me. You are the parent – turn it off.”
It became my motto. When in doubt turn it off! That took a lot of pressure off of me. If I am in a rush and don’t have the time to analyze what’s on an iPod or TV. . . I turn it off. If the kids give me a hard time about turning it off, I just take it away.
This , of course, can really frustrate my kids so I have to make time sooner rather than later to analyze the song . Now, after a few years, it is a little easier because if I do a double take over anything I see or hear, my kids usually volunteer to change it for fear they will lose their player.
I still have random iPod checks where I simply request to see what’s on their playlist. This is a good reason never to get your child an iPod that can hold 50 bajillion songs. Way too much detail for me! It really isn’t easy keeping up with songs, shows and movies. I use the iMOM Music Monitor because they list some of the lyrics (which I usually can’t understand on the iPod) and a couple different movie review sites. iMOM is working on a Movie Monitor for later this summer.
