Embracing your child's aesthetics

An excerpt from health happiness love longevity peace prosperity and safety


You want your kid to love what you love, if only as a starting point for appreciating things. And maybe it turns into something you share over a lifetime.

Celtics basketball, Italian food, cars, motorcycles, crime dramas.

But you have to start out where she is. The Berenstain Bears, Pretty Pretty Princess, the shows on Disney and Nick where kids scream from start to finish. You have to take the first step, like what she likes, inhabit her world.

Your aesthetic boundaries broaden to include the culture of her childhood. Or you create secondary boundaries to embrace those things. Yes, pretty funny how Zach and Cody always get over on Mr. Mosley. Hm, Josh seems to be channeling Jackie Gleason for a lot of his shtick. Not really interesting in this context, but still some nod to higher art.

You stay there with her, try to see the world she sees. The two of you settle in for an hour of kid shows. Does she get what’s going on? Does she understand which ones are weasels and which are the good guys? Hard, because the kids’ networks seem to glorify the weasels. Who writes this crap?

But she’s addicted, like you were when you were a kid. You had the advantage, though, of all TV being G rated, so you could watch the adult shows, too. Perry Mason, Sea Hunt, Divorce Court. It wasn’t all Three Stooges and Bugs Bunny. But even Moe and Larry assaulting one another seemed to have more thought behind it than this crap.

You loved what you loved when you were a kid because it resonated somehow. What if your dad had sat down with you and the two of you had a belly laugh over the Stooges? Or if the two of you tried to figure out who the killer was before Mason outted him in the courtroom? Maybe childhood would’ve been an entirely different experience.

So you sit with your daughter, get to know the characters, follow the story lines. And one day she says, “Dad, you know what happened on Zoey today?”

A couple years later, you’re watching The Mentalist together, looking for clues, trying to figure out who the killer is before Jane sets up a sting and hands him over to Lisbon.

You indulge a couple years of Pretty Pretty Princess, and now she’s calling seven-card stud, deuces wild when it’s her deal.
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Published on December 27, 2013 17:35
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A mid-life perspective

Kevin Tudish
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