Be Careful, Your Kids Are Watching This

I will preface this by saying that I do not have any kids. As such is the case, I clearly have no business telling you how to raise your own kids. However, I'm going to go ahead and tell you how to raise your kids anyway, or at the very least give you some helpful hints that might make your life with your kids slightly more tolerable.

Now, this thought that I can be of use in advising people about proper child rearing did not come to me until rather recently. As it so happens, in the great city of Houston, TX an annual rodeo takes place. And what happens at this annual rodeo? Well obviously, the usual sort of things that you might imagine take place at a rodeo: calf branding, sheep shearing, cow tipping, and my favorite, the fox in the hen house extravaganza. Okay, I admit that the aforementioned events are best guesses on my part since you would be very hard pressed to get me into the arena while this stupid stuff is going on. However, this is what I envision happens during these rodeo events, so do not ruin this for me. Well, a couple of years ago, some of my friends convinced me to attend an awful Maroon 5 concert at the rodeo. I say awful because (1) it's Maroon 5, (2) they were playing then the same like five songs that they had been playing up to that point the previous two years or so and at this point the last four years or so, and (3) I had to deal with an intolerable number of screaming teenage girls who seemed not to realize, or perhaps not to care, that they were screaming for the same five songs that they had been screaming for at that point about two years and would very likely be screaming for the same five songs two years later.

Now, I know that some of you are wondering how this could possibly have anything to do with my tips for you as to how to raise your kids. Trust me, I have not forgotten where I was going with this. It so happened that a coworker asked me one day if I would be able to do her a favor and purchase tickets for a particular rodeo act because her younger cousins were dying to attend this performance. And what might this performance be? Well, it is none other than Hannah Montana! For those unaware, Hannah Montana is a program that comes on the Disney Channel and the character Hannah Montana is played by the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus. This fact alone should discourage parents from letting their kids see the program because of "Achy Breaky Heart" and the mullet. Despite these understandable misgivings, I woke up early on a Saturday morning and attempted to purchase Hannah Montana tickets. I ended up arriving no more than twenty-five minutes after the tickets were to go on sale only to find that there were already close to fifty people who had arrived before me to purchase rodeo tickets. I overheard one of the people ahead of me in line saying that there was a guy who had been in line who originally said that he only wanted ten Hannah Montana tickets, but ended up getting twenty. I did a little quick math in my head and figured that this would be a lost cause in terms of me actually getting these tickets.

Obviously I was quite disappointed - not because a couple of little girls would be saddened about not seeing Hannah Montana, but because I had woken up early on a Saturday morning for what turned out to be no reason. And this is precisely why I have decided that I am qualified to help people raise their kids. I completely unburdened with having to love your kids. Be honest, those of you with kids; you essentially hate all of the programming that your kids watch. However, since you love your kids, and you see that your kids do like these programs, you bite your tongue and reluctantly watch these programs. Here is my advice; you use your parental controls on your televisions and you block the Disney Channel. The Disney Channel is one of the most dangerous channels ever created. The reason why this channel is so dangerous is because it produces programs like Hannah Montana, That's So Raven, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and Cheetah Girls. Now these programs might seem completely harmless other than the fact that they cannot be remotely entertaining if you are over the age of ten, but they are dangerous because they utilize live actors. Live actors means the potential of the actors performing musical acts and thus appearing in concerts like this series of concerts at the Houston Rodeo. Now, little kids have, shall we say, imperfect concepts of what money and limited ticket numbers mean. When a young child falls in love with a show like Hannah Montana and learns that Hannah Montana will be performing in the very same city in which the child lives, guess what, you're screwed. There is nothing you are going to be able to say to this child to overcome the disappointment the child will have at learning that he or she will not be able to see Hannah Montana. And if you are "fortunate" enough to obtain tickets, it could cost you quite a bit since you will likely have to pay an unbelievably inflated price to buy them on eBay, and then you will also be forced to sit through an atrocious show.

So let give you my advice. Block the Disney Channel (don't even allow them to watch cartoons on the station since commercials for these shows will inevitably be shown during the cartoon programming), and steer your kids toward watching either Cartoon Network (and perhaps its sister station Boomerang) since other than when they have made such unforgivable decisions as to include Saved by the Bell and Pee Wee's Playhouse as part of the [adult swim] lineup, they have tended to stick exclusively with cartoon programming (and really, I would hope that your kids wouldn't be watching these shows anyway since it is called [adult swim] your kids should be in bed and even if they are awake, one would hope that they are smart enough to realize that these shows are total crap), and C-SPAN since no one can get enough of watching Congressional sessions, and there is almost no chance that you will be dragged by your child to a concert being performed by one of the C-SPAN stars. So to summarize: (1) block the Disney Channel and (2) let your kids watch Cartoon Network or C-SPAN.

You are quite welcome, and if you need any other advice in raising your kids, don't hesitate to ask.