Your Toddler and YouTube

I read an article in my pre-parenting days that said Generation X parents are frequently disappointed when they try to do things with their kids that they remember fondly from their own childhoods. The article claimed that the primary reason for this is that we tend to underestimate our own ages in our memories. So we try to take our four year olds on the same kind of camping trips we enjoyed with dad when we were eight, and wonder why it doesn’t work out. Or we take our eight year olds to the opera because it was so special when we went the first time (at fourteen) and then end up leaving during the intermission, swearing never to take our kids anywhere ever again.

I’ve tried to keep that in mind with my own kids and not push the age-envelope too much. Even if I’m sure that I was five when I watched Dirty Harry, at that age Super Why was unquestionably more Rose Red’s speed. But that Gen X drive to share the hipness with our kids is really hard to completely overcome. Our generation is known for immaturity. We skateboard and Playstation our way through middle age and by God, we want to do that stuff with our kids, too. That is why I was so very happy to show The Adventures of Lil Cthulhu to my girls. At ages five and one, I could use this video as a reward. “If you eat all your salad and put your clothes in the laundry after bath, you can watch Little Cthulhu.” (Here’s a link to a cool blog post where I found this picture: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/5367)