Why I love my electronic babysitters

I'm having one of those months. You know the kind, your four year old decides this would be a perfect time to regress back to the age of 2, your boss feels that the 200 clients she manages on her own simply aren't enough, and it's up to you to figure out how to juggle the bulging diary of an overworked boss, your backside breaks yet another chair, same old thing really. But as any mum will tell you, sometimes when life keeps handing you lemon after lemon, you need a few things to save your sanity. For the housewives of the 1950's it was bottles of alcohol hidden in laundry baskets, but for me it's electronic babysitters.

These days it's a cardinal sin to admit that you allow your children free range of any electronic entertainment that their little heart desires. To the point that I actually resisted buying my daughter a children's tablet for a year, simply because I didn't want the other mothers at the store to judge me. But I'm here to tell those Judgy Mcjudgersons that they're missing the bigger picture by insisting that their children entertain themselves rather than plonking them in front of a TV screen so you can retire to your happy place for an hour or so. (or in my case go to the toilet without an audience). So today I am here as an advocate for every television that remains switched off during the day, and video console which gathers dust on weekends while children argue in their bedrooms over who can do the louder armpit farts. So below is a list of exactly why I love my electronic babysitters.

1. It's the only time children sit still
I'll get the obvious out of the way first. You turn on the television, and your children instantly become mute zombies. They also desire that you become a mute zombie, because every time you speak over the television they miss yet another glorious few seconds of Hulk and the agents of S.M.A.S.H (and let me tell you, the dialogue in some of these shows is pure gold.) When you have a child who only operates on two speeds, super fast and at the speed of light, then you will do anything you can to make them have an occasional rest, short of tying them down. The TV is the perfect solution to this problem. It also puts a stop to the million questions children ask you over the course of a day. Suddenly they don't want to know why you're calling the guy letting his dog take a dump on your nature strip horrible names, because they've got more pressing things to worry about, like how is Batman going to save the day yet again when he has no real powers. You can also rest safe in the knowledge that they won't take the choice phrases you yell through your curtains to school or kindergarten the next day because when the TV goes on, they hear nothing else. It is truly magic.

2. They learn things you don't have the energy or patience to teach them
Thanks to the wonders of children's television Miss K is gaining a wealth of knowledge I have no ability to teach her.  Waybuloo is teaching her yoga (or yogo as they call it, which is confusing around here, because that's a brand of chocolate yogurt), something which will benefit me greatly when I decide to enroll in a mummy and me yoga class one day, and my daughter can do the downward facing dog while the other children are sitting on the floor sucking on their thumbs.  Thanks to the psychedelic shows like Teletubbies and Baby Jake she's learning the dangers of doing psychotropic drugs like LSD (because you cannot tell me all of the people involved in those shows weren't tripping balls the whole time they were making that crap.) The access to the child safe videos on Miss K's Leap Pad have educated her to the awesome wonders of screaming goats, and excellent physical activities such as parkour.  I will admit however that after watching some of those videos I had to rescue her from the top of a mattress that was stacked on its side against a wall in our spare room, as she decided one viewing of these videos was enough to make her a parkour expert. (Either that or her cousin's obsession with Spiderman is really starting to rub off on her.)

3. You can subject your children to countless hours of lectures without losing your voice
This one actually bugged me at first until I realised I could use it to my advantage. Every children's show these days has an important take home message, whether it be the uplifting always be yourself, even if you are a barely evolved caveman, or the more surreal never impersonate a multi-millionaire CEO of a large corporation, as you'll end up in a wacky series of hi-jinx that will be next to impossible to explain to your parents, and may end up with you losing your computer privileges for a week. These days I take special note of all of the messages that come with Miss K's favourite shows, simply so that when she inevitably breaks one of the cardinal rules set out by her beloved TV, I can just sit back and say "Well you should have done what Elmo told you, and you wouldn't have ended up nearly cracking your own backside on the pavement." It hits home quicker than the hour long lectures I used to have to give just to drive a point home, and it comes with pretty colours and spontaneous singing, which is something I haven't attempted since my last night spent drinking butterscotch schnapps.

So people, please go easy on the electronic babysitters, they are more valuable than you realise. I think there are some of you who owe your televisions an apology, and maybe a little hug. Go ahead, I won't judge.

Eye candy for us mums

Would you like to know the real reason I let Miss K watch television?

 

The gorgeous actors on the shows she loves of course. Let me give you an example. 

Yumm!

This attractive lad is Gavin Stenhouse. He plays Nate on the Iconicles, a show which combines computer generated animation with real live action for an audience of snot nosed brats and their mums. The kids will never appreciate that smile quite like the mums can, which I think is why they cast him. But he isn't the only good looking guy on our screen these days, oh no, there are more...

This is Phil Gallagher, or if you have children, Mister Maker. He presents an art show for kids similar to Art Attack which is what I watched when I was a kid. He reminds me a bit of my first boyfriend unfortunately, especially given he acts as if he's constantly in a beach side pantomime, which gets a bit much after a while, but he's still nice to look at.

This is James Rees otherwise known as Jimmy Giggle. (The blue owl next to him is Hoot the Owl). Now I have it on good authority from my little brother that James is a lot more arrogant than his alter ego as my brother has performed with his parents in an amateur production of Oklahoma last year, so I don't really harbour any fantasies of him bumping into us one day and falling in love with both me and Miss K so much that he gives up his television career to live in the sticks with us. But still, isn't he pretty??? 

One more picture?? Oh alright then

Now this gentleman isn't so much to look at in the facial area as the other gentlemen were, but that's not what I look at when I'm watching Lazy Town. This is Magnus Scheving from Iceland. He's an Olympic gymnast, as well as being the creator of the show Lazy Town. So brains and brawn all in the one tidy little package. Plus he can leap about like he weighs absolutely nothing. Yummy! 

So there you have it. The real reason I let my daughter rot her brain with television, because it gets mine fired right up. 

A blow for the Morality Police everywhere

I know I've been notably absent the past few days, but I have been busy painting and drawing for Miss K's new bedroom. To make it up to all of you wonderfully patient people today, I have a new rant for you.

The latest comedy offering from Britain to hit Australia's televisions is a show called Mrs Brown's Boys. We have only just received the first season down here in the past couple of months, and so far it is proving to be quite popular. Now at the end of each show as they are advertising next week's episodes, they have small grabs of reviews of the show flashing onto the screen, and none of the reviews are flattering at all. One review last night called the show "filthy smut parading as comedy". While most producers would be heartbroken by such harsh criticisms of their show, the makers of Mrs Brown's Boys are celebrating the fact that they are hated by the Morality Police, and are using it as a selling point for the show.

Now the reviews may be technically correct, the show is indeed quite crude and almost amateurish, however it does have some incredibly funny moments in it, and the dialogue can be quite clever. But to call it shocking would be an overstatement, especially in a world where shows like Little Britain and Family Guy are regularly aired on public channels. If the show had come out twenty years ago when swearing was rarely heard on our television screens, then yes this show would have been quite shocking, and the boycotts would have been huge. But in these days of YouTube where nothing is secret any more, I think we've become so desensitised to what used to be considered inappropriate that a show like this is nothing more than mindless entertainment.

So this begs the question, do we really have a need for the morality police any more considering that these days there is no clear cut rules to what is immoral any more? When books like 50 Shades of Grey are being sold openly on the shelves of every book store instead of from under the counter of adult stores only, what right does anyone have to say that something is too shocking to be viewed by the masses? Of course everything I have mentioned here is indeed inappropriate for children, but that is a different subject altogether, and they indeed should be protected from all of this. But that isn't really what bothers the morality police when they get their knickers in a knot over shows like Mrs Brown's Boys. The show is already only screened at an hour when children are long in bed, so there is no risk of young eyes seeing anything they shouldn't. But why do some people still think that adult eyes need to be protected so vigorously? I thought that we had gotten past the shame that we are all human, we've admitted as a whole society that we all go to the toilet, we all have sex, we all like sex and we all have grooming habits that can be quite unattractive. Shows that laugh at all of the base elements of humans, while being incredibly low brow, can still be very funny. And I don't think there is anyone alive who can say with complete honesty that they have never laughed when someone farted in a public place. 


Luckily for the people who enjoy shows like Mrs Brown's Boys, it appears that no one listens to the Morality Police any more, and it appears that sometimes they go out of their way to produce shows like this just to piss them off. But in a way this benefits everyone. The Morality Police have something new to bitch about, and the rest of us have something to laugh at. I know which one I prefer.