On a day when we mark the deaths of so many who died that we be free, I am slightly baffled by my children's attitude to death. Not just death either but suicide, divorce and care homes. At the ages of 9 and 6, I am fairly sure I had not even heard of suicide or care homes, yet all of the above are so normal to my children they form part of their role play games with alarming frequency.
I am not going to attack single parents, they are not to blame. I myself was the only child to s single parent for 7 years, until my Mother remarried. It is part of the reason I know it is no game. I know that suicide, care homes and death are not games too. I have been touched by them and the reality of what they mean. Not all of them personally, but certainly I have witnessed friends close to me go through the pain they involve. Yet to my children, these things are normal and something to joke about. I used to believe CBBC was a good thing. It had no adverts and I considered it to deal with issues and educate children. Then I encountered Tracy Beaker and the Dumping ground. It is a follow on from an emerging trend of author's such as Judy Blume when I was younger. They start to deal with the reality of teenage life and struggles there in. Judy Blume did it well, it was portrayed in a much more realistic way and was aimed at a higher age group. Though it has to be said my interests lay in other areas, primarily at the time Gerald Durrell and the Bronte sisters and therefore these books only made a passing impact on my life and identity. However Jacquline Wilson's books have made it into tv adaptations on CBBC. Now, they do deal with important issues and I think this is necessary. The trouble is CBBC viewers are not limited to late primary school and teenage children. It's viewers range official from 7/8 upwards and in reality if they have siblings they start watching it from younger if you only have one television in the house. Now we only have an hours tv watching a day in this house, when I am preparing dinner. On a Saturday and in holidays first thing in the morning. Yet encountering these tv programmes on such a brief time span has still effected the way they see the world, to the extent that we have banned the watching of some of them. It is not that I disagree with them attempting to deal with these problems, it is that they do not just normalise them but make them seem fun. The introduction of cartoon images in between scenes means that through the eyes of a younger child they must be fun and therefore become a game. Before you even know it your child is marrying, divorcing, and sending children to care homes several times in a morning. Yes role play helps children to deal with the world around them. But when such ideas become entrenched and acceptable when they are so young, it is not hard to see why they become easy to do when you are older.
We are a Christian country, we are supposed to believe in a Christian morality. We are supposed to promote the ideas that a stable family is the best way forward. We are meant to demonstrate the sanctity of life, so as that when we come to mark days of remembrance and Christ's crucifixion, the enormity of the sacrifice makes an impact on the children. So as that they can understand it's value, pass it on to the next generation. Such an understanding is required to stop such atrocities ever happening again. If it all becomes normal, even in games at the age of 6, what hope have we for preserving the sanctity of life and family models.
I know many issues in society frighten children and we need to talk to and deal with them with our children. But when they seem so much fun on television, you are not dealing with it. You are going to bring a whole generation of children down with a bump when they realise that what they had thought of as a bit of cartoon fun, actually is far more serious and is full of pain. They will find that death is permanent and people do not come back when you switch the telly on for repeats. That divorce tares families apart. That the many and varied reasons why a child ends up in a care home are anything but glossy and fun. If we want to deal with the issues, we should deal with them a)in guaranteed age range that understand what is trying to be dealt with and b)in a realistic manner, that does not frighten but does ultimately portray what really does happen.
Whilst these things are normal and do happen, they are not meant to be the ideal. If we make them seem more fun than the alternatives, it is no surprise that the next generation will part from their lives and families with such ease. It will not just become a disposable consumer society, but our families and maybe even our lives will become disposable with much more ease. I do not think that all those men went to war and sacrificed their lives, so that we could dispose of ours quite that freely.
