The Parents’ Choice Foundation, which has long been the country’s preeminent guide to children’s media and toys, continues to stay ahead of the curve with its meticulous reviews, broad range of content, and easily navigable Web site. After years of referring to their picks for the best children’s books, videos, games, and more, I had the privilege to write reviews and articles for the Foundation, headed by Claire Green, who never ceases to look for ways to help parents find the best media tools to help educate and enlighten kids. Recently, I began contributing to the Parents’ Choice blog, a regularly updated feature that covers everything from the finest chapter books to the must-see TV programs of the week. Take a peek at my first posting, called “Decade by Decade: An Autobiography Through Popular Media.” Here’s an excerpt:
“One way I’ve started to organize the telling of my life story through media is by decade. Born in the mid-’60s, my earliest memories include hearing Fifth Dimension’s 1969 version of ‘Aquarius’ on the radio of my family’s faux wood-paneled station wagon. This kicked off a discussion with my kids about the flower power generation and the hippie culture.”
Please post comments and provide your own memories of meaningful media in your life.
Despite grand plans to watch everything on TV, we’ve only managed to watch highlights so far of the FIFA World Cup. We’ve been listening on the radio, which is better than I expected. Who is that Irish commentator on ESPN? Great fun to listen to his hyper-dramaticization of the few goals being scored. Best part of the Cup, thus far? Teaching my kids — and myself — geography and culture highlights.
In the world of TV, things happen fast, so read the following and, if you know someone in Los Angeles who can call the number below today, you could be a tube star before you can say, “Gee, these strained carrots look good on my button-down shirt.” By the way, the show correspondent mentioned below is likely to be the beautiful mom and TV personality, Brooke Burke.
Tim Palazzola of the the daytime medical show, The Doctors, is helping produce a segment on family health; they are looking for Stay At Home Dads to participate.
Specifically, they are looking for a Stay At Home Dad that has more than one kid (ages 1 - 14) that is some what new to being at home during the day and has questions/ concerns about managing the household while his wife is at work. They have a special medical correspondent that we would like to send to that dad’s house to help him get things in order. The feeling of the piece is very positive, triumphant, and fun.
They are looking to start work this week, so any interest is appreciated. Call 323.956.8627 for more information. Good luck, dads!
Seeking a little extra help with our often overly revved up family life, my wife submitted an application to a reality TV show called Real Life Real Simple. The program took us on and the production was a very good experience, mostly because the producers and crew were some of the nicest and most helpful people we could have hoped to meet in this situation. They even assisted us during our crisis with our son’s dog bites. This Friday night (November 21), at 8/7 C, our episode airs on the TLC network. We have not seen our installment of the show — just the audition tape – so we’re nervous to see how chaotic our life looks on TV.
I’ve known Rick Gitelson since his son Alex and my oldest boy became buddies in preschool seven years ago. He’s always been one of the sharpest wits on the sidelines at kids’ birthday parties and sports events (starring our own children or those of the NFL variety). He’s also been someone I’ve relied on for good advice about being a grown-up — even though Rick makes his living thinking like a child.
Rick is a children’s TV writer and producer. He’s won Emmy awards and international audiences for series that include Rugrats, Lazy Town, and Handy Manny. Now, he’s developed a new show, Imagination Movers, that is his best work. It replaces the bouncy cuteness of TheWiggles with a folksy zaniness and rock ‘n soul music to bolster its lessons about friendship and the cool things in the world around us.
The program begins airing on September 6, 10am/9 Central, on Playhouse Disney’s daily morning lineup (atv.disney.go.com/playhouse/imaginationmovers/index.html). It features the four Imagination Movers — Rich, Scott, Dave, and Smitty — who have already made a name in the family music world, becoming mainstays on satellite radio channels such as XM Kids. Building off the blue-overalled personae they created for CDs and DVDs, as well as their experience as family men (all the guys are married and three of them are dads), the Movers have an approachability factor that makes kids want to follow their lead. The earthiness the fellas exude, especially on their new TV show, is real, partly because they’ve collectively worked for many years in various professions — Scott’s an award-winning teacher and Smitty’s a firefighter — and have been directly affected by Hurricane Katrina in their hometown of New Orleans, where the show is taped.
In each 30-minute episode, the “gearheads” (as they’ve nicknamed themselves) hang out in their Idea Warehouse, where they handle a specific “idea emergency” that involves problem solving and learning new information. They are joined by their friend Nina as well as an offbeat character named Knit Knots and a puppet called Warehouse Mouse. Every episode includes three staple songs (including “Brainstorm Song”), which characterize a development in the idea exploration, and two story-specific tunes. The premiere episode has the Movers trying to discover the source of a foghorn-like sound that keeps interrupting the birthday song they’ve written for Nina.
Imagination Movers is a series that will get kids dancing, air-guitaring, and drumming along as they laugh and learn. It’s also a show parents will be happy to have move into their morning routines.
Nice work, Rick. Any chance I can you can teach me how to turn my own glasses into “wobble goggles”?
How’s this for father-child bonding? A troupe of dads out of Temecula, California, were looking for another way to hang out with their daughters. So, they started taking tap-dancing lessons with their kids. Now the group, under the direction of Jimmy Peters, will be performing tonight, July 29, on NBC’s America’s Got Talent (9/8c). You can see video and learn more about them at www.myspace.com/tappingdads . Good luck to Rodney Amstutz (who sent me an e-mail about the dads) and the rest of the tappers in the competition and beyond!
I’m a big fan of the show Medium in large part because, for all the paranormal intrusion on the Dubois family, the dad is a fairly normal guy with realistic relationships with his wife and kids. OK, I also have a longstanding crush on Patricia Arquette (and her sister Rosanna, for that matter , but I digress). But the character of Joe Dubois (admirably played by the underrated Jake Weber) makes dads look good, even in his imperfections.
While I’d like to think I’m a little like Joe Dubois, I’m probably somewhere between the deeply concerned character Bill Bixby played on The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and the mistake-prone Herman Munster.
On Saturday, June 7, at 1:48pm (PST)/4:48pm (EST), I’ll be on the FOX News Channel talking about whether or not the size of families is shrinking and what factors might cause this. In my own circle, I’ve seen quite a few families with three or more kids — including my own family. Perhaps it’s a function of gravitating to a social circle that shares our ideas about family life (including a strange attraction to utter chaos).
However, based on some of the reading I’ve done on the Web (including articles at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14942047/ and www.wired.com/science/discoveries/commentary/dissection/2008/02/dissection_0208), parents in the U.S. do seem to be having fewer kids as the decades march away from the early-20th century. Some of the factors cited are the financial difficulties of having a lot of kids, but the financial angle also suggests that wealthier parents may have such high standards for supporting their kids (such as sending them to college and grad school) that they choose to have fewer kids so they have a better chance of meeting those standards.
Other contributors to the trend include the fact that adults are waiting till they’re older to have children and, especially for working parents, the feeling that having only one or two kids will make spending quality time with those children more assured. It also appears that, as has been statistically shown throughout history, urban parents tend to have fewer children, again partly due to a higher cost of living in cities.
The segment producer for FOX, Elizabeth Prann, pointed out Kathleen Deveny’s article about life with a single child, and that piece offers an interesting perspective on one parent’s experience (www.newsweek.com/id/138538). Although she does grapple with guilt about not delivering a sibling for her child, Deveny offers some good insights about “onlies” (children without siblings) and discusses some of the benefits single kids enjoy.
The Walt Disney Co. announced today that it will ban smoking in its family-targeted, Disney-branded films and will “discourage” the depiction of smoking in its Touchstone and Miramax motion pictures (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/25/AR2007072501051.html). I will be joining a panel of commentators on FOX News Channel, this Saturday (July 28) at 11:48 am PST/2:48 pm EST, to discuss whether Disney is going too far in coddling children and hiding the dangers of real life from them. Other questions include whether there might not be better ways to keep our kids from smoking.
I’ve got some more thinking to do, but my initial thoughts are that this is a positive step. Movies and TV tend to glamorize smoking and refraining from showing actors looking cool with the smoke curling from their lips could help prevent children from taking on this unhealthy habit. For decades, the tobacco industry has benefited from the free advertising of film and TV characters smoking away. There are also the findings from organizations such as the nonprofit American Legacy Foundation, which found that kids with “the highest exposure to smoking in movies were nearly three times as likely to start smoking.”
It is important to identify the slippery slope of Disney’s ban in that it can interfere with artistic license. I’m not sure how I feel about grown-up branded movies not showing smoking if that is somehow inherent to a character. However, it has been frequently noted that movie stars, like the forever stylish Humphrey Bogart, inspired people to smoke by puffing away on the silver screen.
I’d really like to hear your feedback on this issue as I try to consider all the angles.
With the Alec Baldwin-Ireland Baldwin-Kim Basinger story that has filled the media with content for more than a week, we get one of our prime examples of how America preoccupies itself with bagging on celebrities because we feel better when we see ourselves as better adjusted than the rich and famous. Last week, I talked about the case on FOX’s Studio B program and stated the obvious: Baldwin made a big mistake in verbaling abusing his daughter over the phone. Worse yet, he did it in a voicemail, for his daughter to hear over and over again — and for Kim Basinger’s lawyers to use against him.
This brings out the other side to this story, which is how the lawyers and media got the recording. However we slice it, Basinger sent it over and agreed to its public airing for the sake of saving her daughter from the angry dad (though there may be some other nastier reasons as well). But didn’t this put Ireland in an even worse position, now that she’s under as much public scrutiny as her parents? I’ve read some interesting points about whether Basinger has been engaging in something called Parental Alienation, in which one parent poisons the water between a parent and child to keep the other parent away from the child. This may or may not be happening, though it still does not take away the harm Baldwin did in his phone call.
It should be noted that, since the recorded tirade, Baldwin has apologized to his daughter and gone on The View to show humility. He knows he made a bad choice and he wants forgiveness for his flaws as a parent (he even offered to quit his hit sitcom 30 Rock to keep his co-stars out of the fracas). I don’t know enough about the case to make a perfect assumption here, but what I do know seems to show that Baldwin is not a criminal and loves his daughter very much. Lots of counseling and legal parameters need to be in place, but his daughter needs his involvement and he appears to want to do that. In fact, based on the fact that he wasn’t even sure how old she is reveals that he should be a lot more involved. What remains is that we have a child put in the middle of a horrible divorce and two parents who must think of her first, now that they hate each other. They must be civil and prove to Ireland that she matters more than their petty differences. This is something even non-celebrities who get divorced can learn from — once there’s a divorce, what matters is the child you share.
