 “So, what does your daughter watch on TV?” I was asked by a parent one afternoon.“Well,” I began with hesitation, “she doesn’t watch much TV, but when we do, it’s mostly documentaries.”“Documentaries?” was the surprised response.“What do your little ones watch?” I countered, evasively.“Oh, American Idol, cartoons, some educational CD’s, mostly what we’re watching,” she answered.Then surprisingly she asked, “Why documentaries?” “Occasionally she’ll watch a PBS kid’s show and I noticed that she never asked any questions or showed any involvement with the show, other then sitting there and staring and the obligatory imitation of what she saw. A pretty passive experience,” I said.“Then I got the idea to introduce her to documentary movies that had information that fit into things she was reading about,” I continued.“Like what documentaries?” she asked. “March of the Penguins; Winged Migration and the Life of Birds,” I answered.“What happened was so interesting---while watching these movies, she had dozens of wonderful questions and she showed such exuberance. She also would try to explain what she had seen and would try to fit it into the world around her with great observations,” I added.“I guess for me, it’s less about thrusting a child into a “cartoon world” and more about sparking a child’s burgeoning curiosity about this world around them,” I said.“Well, I know my kids like American Idol and I don’t know if they’d sit through a documentary,” she added. “When they watch the educational CD’s they do repeat what they’ve seen---my daughter learned how to count to 10.” “Documentaries are also such a time commitment,” she posited.“They can be, but we don’t watch them for more then 15 minutes at a time--say, every third or fourth day---it can take weeks to watch one documentary,” I laughed.“Well, it was nice to see you, talk again soon,” I said as I waved goodbye.“You too, bye now,” she replied.all content The New Parent © 2007
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