Doctor Who IS for Kids

One of the great things about being an Au Pair is that it really teaches you how you want to raise your own kids. That being said. One of the hardest things about being an Au Pair is that it teaches you all the ways you will never treat/behave with your kids and then forces you to act in that personally envisioned irrational way for several months.

I believe in raising kids as the tiny adults they are. Yes, they haven't seen as much as you have, and they often can't express how they feel or what they think. But if you've ever had a simply spoken yet utterly profound conversation with a kid, you realize how fresh a prospective they bring to everything and how they are really just very small adults trying to grow up in our crazy world. I prefer to respect this potential in kids by treating them as adults in everything we do. And a big part of that is not allowing them to be babied by me or the media. What does that mean? I HATE CHILDREN'S MUSIC. With a passion. I HATE it. I listen to "regular" music with kids exclusively--as long as it's clean I can't see any reason children shouldn't hear it. We are listening to Mozart per-natal after all.  I also hate children's television and books that don't have something else going for them. Dr. Seuss rules, so does Toy Story (movies not any other form of that franchise), and C.S. Lewis, Rowling, the Ant and Bee books, Raul Dahl. There are so many great forms of children's literature, for every age that keeps things simple without dumbing anything down or addressing children as if they are incompetent. I tolerate things like The Barrenstein Bears, Cars, and Curious George. But if a piece of media isn't going to respect my kids, why should I respect it.

I think as a result of these strong opinions I have a tendency to push parents' boundaries regarding the maturity of their children. I want to read the first two Harry Potter books with kids starting at 6. I'll read The Magician's Nephew, the (more) complex Dr. Seuss stories and Shel Silverstein by 3. And I'll watch real actor television, and quality productions with kids at ages their parents deem inappropriate. Like today and watching Doctor Who with my 3.5 and 6 year olds. The first few minutes it was a mistake. The computer was open, DW was up ("The Lodger" a funny and monster-free episode) and Jay wanted to just see a few minutes. When we finished the second half of the episode, all three of us together now, they were very excited. I thought that would be it for the day. But they asked for another episode as a reward for cleaning up the (incredibly messy) living room and I caved because it's Doctor Who and these kids want to watch Rory the Racing Car more than Duck Tales (side note: what's up with that?). I spent several minutes searching for another good episode, and finally settled on "The Eleventh Hour" because it has few monster sightings and lots of physical comedy--after starting and they got scared of the giant eye that is the warden I turned it off, and quickly realized that we should have watched "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" instead. The boys both still liked it, and would have continued to watch it with me, stop and go to explain who the aliens are, that not everything that looks like a monster is a monster, and that in the end the good guys always win. But Tina took Jay away at the moment we saw our first alien (big mistake to not let something scary resolve itself in my opinion) and Lee and I stopped soon after, when he had laughed and we had clearly moved past the fear he was having with any aliens.

I know that a lot of parents would disagree with me about watching something as mature as Doctor Who with young kids. Yes it's scary sometimes--there are even episodes I won't watch alone ("Hide" had me wishing it was an alien repeatedly). So don't watch every episode. As with all media, know what you're putting into your kid before you let them experience it. Yes the plot lines are extremely complex. But when is a challenging word puzzle something bad? If it's keeping your kids from enjoying it, then stop. But if they still enjoy it and neither of you understand, laugh about how it's impossible to understand. I wouldn't trade those childhood experiences of feeling respected and appreciated by my whole family for anything. Almost all of them happened because someone handed me a book, or rented a movie with me, or let me listen to music with social messages when I was just on the verge of being "old enough" to understand. This media challenged me, and made me think critically. Even when it was my first PG13 movie (Men in Black), which you wouldn't consider very advanced; at 7 years old it forced me to understand vulgarity (in both action and language) as a negative trait, and to enjoy temporary suspended disbelief in the face of nightmare-quality plot lines.

I have a feeling I have a talking to coming tonight. Through which, as an Au Pair I'll have to keep my cool and simply apologize. But my kids (those in the future that I will have or adopt) will watch Doctor Who, read interesting books, listen to real music and the radio, and grow up much faster for it. For now I just have to suck it up and raise someone else's kids the way they want them to be raised. It's more exhausting to do it their way than it is just to be high-energy with the kids all the time.

My suggested Doctor Who episodes to watch with kids (5+):
"The End of the World"
"Boom Town"
"The Idiot's Lantern"
"Love and Monsters"
"The Next Doctor"
"Partners in Crime"
"The Lodger"
"Closing Time"
"The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe"
"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship"
"The Power of Three"