Ka-pow = oh no

So even though we’re still struggling with the $$$, I approved of spending $4 on a new video for Ben. He watches a movie everysingletime he uses his potty, which is basically all the time now. As long as we’re home, the pull-ups are just catching accidents. (And poo-poo, but boy is that another story.)

Anyway, I wanted him to have a new movie because he was (or maybe Stephen was) getting tired of just watching Elmo all the time. First, Stephen put on Cars for him, which I was OK with, because it was rated G and really cute. But next, it was Powerpuff Girls, which is PG. OK, fine, because they were just watching the opening scenes where the girls are born and then go to Kindergarten and then play tag. Well, then Stephen kept letting him watch a little more each day and it was getting more and more violent. You knew it was bad because Ben was acting scared at the movie. So what do we do? Turn it off? Well, that’s what I wanted to do, but Stephen was talking him through it, helping him to feel excited instead of scared. And it wasn’t long before I found myself doing it too. We were trying to cheer him up by desentizing him to the violence.

“Ka-pow! Go Powerpuff Girls! Get those bad monkeys! Yay, Powerpuff Girls save the day!”

And sure enough, he wasn’t bothered by it anymore. And even surer enough, it was only a few more hours before it occured to him to take a pillow off the couch and attack Blinx with it. “Bad kitty! Ben-Ben get you!” I pulled the pillow from him, told him he could hit the pillow with his fists or yell into it, but he couldn’t hit the cat with it. I turn around 30 seconds later and he’s hitting Blinx with his fists! Dammit.

What frustrates me the most is that Stephen just doesn’t seem to see this. He thinks, “Oh, he’s being a boy. All boys go through this type of stage. We teach him that kitties have feelings and put him in time-out if he does it again and he learns what the rules are. No biggie.”

And I guess those things are fine enough, but why set him up to fail, you know? We show him videos of little girls beating up on monkeys, we cheer them on, and then we tell him he can’t beat on his cats? Why aren’t we cheering for him? You get the idea. Whoever thinks violence on television doesn’t cause it in kids clearly never sat down and actually paid attention to their kids. It’s quite obvious to me.