At the beginning of the video Steve visits a group of children in their home. They teach him a song and dance to sing for his puppy, Blue, at her birthday party. Later he tells all of the party guests that he made the song/dance up by himself. While this may seem like a small thing, how many of us knew kids who intentionally did stuff like this when we were little?
This is the perfect example of why parents need to be watching tv WITH their children. Even shows with an excellent record of providing good examples, educational programming and fun entertainment pose a threat to the values we teach our children. Nick Jr. does have a responsibility when it comes to providing quality programming, but it never outweighs the parents' job of making sure every show their child watches is in tune with their parenting philosophy.
What to do now? I intend on emailing Nickelodean and letting them know about the mistake, leaving a link for this article and hope some of you readers will leave your thoughts in the discussion area. I don't expect the network to recall the videos, but it would be nice if they could include a note on the packaging about the error and how to talk about it with children.
When my partner noticed the problem we decided to show it again right away. Our children have watched the video a few times without either of us catching onto it. We watched it with them, and talked about how Steve should have said he learned the song especially for Blue's birthday instead of saying he made it up himself.
I'm not sure there is anything else we can do. (If you think of anything, leave it in the discussions folder please :) ) Our children are just starting to get the idea that some people don't tell the truth. I'm sad that one of the examples they have of this is Steve, he's generally such a "good kid" but I guess it's a benefit they see a good kid being bad once in awhile too.
I will end this article with one thought: Parenting is our job. Networks and actors shouldn't be made scapegoats when something misses our attention. Instilling values rests in our hands, and if we let television get in the way of that we are letting our children down. HOWEVER, when a network realizes they have a problem, something should be done to minimize the damage.
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