I laughed ’til I cried when I stumbled across a blog posting about one person’s picks for the top ten weirdest TV shows for children (see Fireflies in the Cloud: The Top Ten Weirdest, Creepiest, Freakiest Children’s Television Shows). As a parent of three little kids (and one big one) who is forced to watch more than my fair share of such shows in order to keep the natives from getting restless, I can really relate to what this person writes (sans some crude language). It is really funny to read that someone else thinks “The Doodlebops” is downright dangerous and freaky, or that “Boobah” is, well, it truly scares me to watch.

The serious point in all of this, though, is that it really pays to monitor what kids are watching on TV. Generally we favor shows on Sprout or PBS Kids, but even there, some weird things creep into shows for children. The main benefit from watching those channels rather than, say, Nicktoons or Disney, is that they don’t bombard you with absolutely awful “kid-oriented” commercials, which when watched, seem like an all out assault on the senses. I hate them and I especially hate the reaction such commercials get from our children, such as, “Oh cool! Dad, can I have that?!” (now, repeat that statement a bazillion times and you get the idea).

If I had my choice, there would be at most an hour of TV watching per day in our house. Ok, maybe I should be less ambitious. In that case my goal is to completely ban any watching of the Disney Channel. I despise the Disney Channel and most everything else that is Disney-related.