SolEX01; My kids know about Hannah Montana and HSM, but they are not interested. If I put it on I am sure they would watch, but I don't. So let me get this straight; first you think my kids encounter too much of popular culture, and now you think they don't get enough?
My first experience with popular culture was being kicked out of an Episcopal Day Care at the tender age of 3. Maybe I'm not the authority on how children encounter popular culture.
In your comments, you expressed an interest in limiting your childrens' exposure to popular culture. If you intend on filtering the world for your children because their father is serving in a controversial war, remember that you're not the only family who went through a controversial war. There are support groups and other community amenities for families of those in Iraq and elsewhere.
What part of father at war do you not understand?
I hear you loud and clear. My perspective is that children ought to be aware of their global surroundings. As a child, my parents didn't speak English and could not communicate global events to me in the native Greek tongue as a child and I had to improvise for myself in English and Greek.
Next time you hear a news report think about it from the perspective of a child with a father over there.
As a child, I would be scared and I wouldn't want to be isolated from the world. I would want to play with my friends and go to school and have some sense of normalcy. I would understand that my mother had a lot on her plate and I would try to be a well behaved child such that Mommy wouldn't yell at me because she's worried enough about Daddy....
It is astoundingly scary to small children to hear about "x" number of soldiers and such dying when they don't know if it is their dad. Often my husband can't contact us for days. And in all likelihood the news media announces deaths before the families have the knock on the door with a flag.
We have to accept the consequences of what has been dealt to us. I'll pray for your husband's safe return and your family enduring the time he has to be away, Lord, have mercy.
The conversation with your eldest was touching and pardon my bluntness - children need to be exposed to the world and not hidden away.
