Pre-teens and Sexual Content

Being a child care provider, I have seen many kids movies and shows through babysitting and working at the drop off daycare that I work at. It always surprises me to see the subtle adult content in the thing the children watch. It always reminds me of an episode of sponge bob square pants where sponge bob is sad and begins drinking "juice." The more juice he drinks the sillier he acts and the stranger his vision gets. Clearly not an appropriate theme for kids.

It makes me wonder why producers and writer feel the need to add these quotes and action to children's programing. Sherek for example is filled with adult content. It's clever how well they hide it, but I have learned that most of the time- Children are smarter then we think. They know things that I don't think I knew about when I was there age.

The show that I have recently discovered is Degrassi. I catch it at night on the TV station "The Noggin." The show takes place in both middle school and high school and unlike One Tree Hill or the OC... the kids look VERY VERY young. In the few times I've watched it before bed, I've been the children fight, have sex, have bisexual intercores, do drugs, and have babies. While many of the TV dramas are about these topics in high school, the actors tend to be in their mid 20s playing teenagers. Not in Degrassi. The actors are young. It surprises me every time.

I love children, and I spend a lot of time with them. There are wholesome children's shows out there that do meet up to the expectation that adults have for children's programming.