Watch out.

Saturdays used to be my favorite day of the week when I was a kid because of Saturday morning cartoons. It was freaking awesome to sit and watch The Smurfs, The Littles, Gummi Bears, Kidd Video, Galaxy High, Bugs Bunny.. all of them. I couldn't get enough. I also was a fan of sitcoms like Punky Brewster, The Jeffersons, Perfect Strangers, The Simpsons, etc.

Most of those shows lacked any real educational value. That's what PBS was for, right? So I found it hilarious that they began requiring all children's shows to teach children some lesson either about life or manners or something to do with reading/writing or math.

Nickelodeon was also a huge favorite of mine. Being home sick during the school day, it was pretty awesome because you could watch all those shows on Nickelodeon and not even know you were learning something. Belle and Sebastian, David the Gnome, The Little Prince. These seemed like classy cartoon shows when compared to the likes of Rocko's Modern Life and especially Ren and Stimpy.

As I progressed in age, my tastes, of course, changed. Liquid Television was a major favorite, especially since it came on just before 120 Minutes on MTV. It was "cool" to watch the show. I can say I felt "cool". Of course, now, I was just preparing myself for a lifetime of laziness. Woot.

At any rate, I've now found myself perusing the tv guide selection for proper entertainment for my own children. I was always left to my own decision-making when it came to my television viewing. My parents had a tv in every room of the house, practically.

We, however, have one television and it is in the living room. It stays off for dinner time. It serves as a disciplinary tool because the privilege will be taken away as punishment. As the girls were growing up, we would watch shows like Sesame Street and Barney together and I'd show them about numbers and letters, colors and shapes. And yeah, Barney was pretty lame but not as bad as "Boobah" or "The Teletubbies". At least Barney had some direction.

Lately though, the girls are more interested in pre-teen shows such as Hannah Montana and iCarly. They do still watch cartoon shows and the programs aimed at younger age groups, such as Wow Wow Wubzy, Dora the Explorer and Spongebob Squarepants. I watch the television with the girls and will comment on certain things that happen or laugh along with them.

Hannah Montana, regardless of your opinion of Miley Cyrus (and her dad), is actually not a bad television program for the genre it's in. It's almost like the I Love Lucy of today but with teenagers instead of grown adults. Another decent pre-teen sitcom is The Suite Life/On Deck with Zach and Cody, which is about a set of twins being raised by their single mother in a hotel/on a cruise ship (she is an employee) and their situations they find themselves in. It, too, is a very I Love Lucy-esque half hour program. Also, both of these are shown on the Disney Channel. And very appropriately so. They're clean cut, well groomed children and seem to display a skill for acting at times making the shows somewhat tolerable.

iCarly is shown on one of Nickelodeon's channels. The main character, Carly, lives with her brother, Spencer, and she has a webshow that she and her two best friends, Freddie (a boy) and Sam (a girl), also star and produce, etc. The slapstick gags are pretty funny and some of the lines delivered are downright hysterical at times. However, where the deviation from iCarly and Hannah Montana is the biting hateful sarcasm and near-bullying of Sam's character against Freddie and others at school.

Sure, it seems funny because there's this 15 year old girl able to knock someone's lights out while the others seem to cushion the harshness of the scene by their innocent doe-eyed candor. Sam will be uncaring, hostile and violent at times. In fact, there has even been an episode or two about how she feels down about the way people treat her and speak about her (a tomboy, rough and bullying) and Carly attempts to make her over with clothing and accessories. Because, you know, matching purses really solve personality issues.

So then you'd think, wow, good thing Disney is the safe place for kids. Ho-ho.. think again.

Let me direct you to a little show called Wizards of Waverly Place. Disney really went out on a stretch with this gem. The storyline here is there is a family of wizards, except for the mother who is a "mortal" and cannot practice magic. The husband offered to give up his magical abilities in order to marry her, due to her non-magical status. Then you have the three teen children who, of course, can perform magic. All of this takes place in the "real world" and not some Hogsmeade-type place where there are shadowy figures looming about. The parents own a sandwich shop and the children, of course, work there part time when they aren't running about causing shenanigans and tom-foolery.

So, the problem that I have with this program is in line with the problem I have with iCarly. The teen daughter's character, Alex, in the WoWP family is a smart-mouthed, sarcastic, spiteful nasty little girl. She comes off as snotty, bratty and a huge pain in the neck. She makes Sam from iCarly seem almost normal. Alex will relentlessly pick on her brothers to the point where I feel uncomfortable. Of course, the storylines sometimes drift here and there and they tend to wither away during the course of the show.

The amazing thing is, this show won an Emmy in 2009 for Outstanding Children's Program. The other contenders that year were iCarly and Hannah Montana. I can tell you why WoWP won the award. The family is of mixed race. Also, it is not a broken family, such as Hannah Montana where she doesn't have a mother and only lives with her father or iCarly where Carly only lives with her brother, Spencer, and there are no parents around.

I am all for having diversity in television. I think there needs to be a shit ton more of it, actually. What I don't like is my impressionable 7 year old daughter thinking that sarcastically biting her sister's head off and harassing her, calling her names and putting her down is acceptable behavior. As we watch these shows, I remind them that Alex is not a very nice girl, that Sam shouldn't want to punch someone or something just because she's angry. However, it's hard to drive the point home when there's a laugh track behind the cutting remarks and low blows delivered in the script. The girls think it must be funny if all those people are laughing at it.

So, to combat the abundance of negativity in my house lately, I am putting a self-imposed ban on these shows. There will be no viewing of WoWP or iCarly, or any other show with similarly written characters, taking place in my house until the girls are able to comprehend that this is not admirable behavior. There will be no internet searches, website visits or YouTube videos of these programs. This is something that has been bothering me for quite some time. I tried to explain the proper behavior to the girls as we watched. It was almost in a "This is what NOT to do" kind of way. Kind of a Goofus and Gallant, if you will. However, it seems to not be working. So, I've decided to just cut it out all together.

If you don't have children in your home or Nickelodeon or Disney Channel, yeah, this post will be completely lost on you. I apologize. However, just be thankful that you haven't been exposed to the horrific treatment these television characters perform on their counterparts. It's pretty terrible. If this were a real life scenario and someone acted this way, I almost guarantee you they would have been expelled from school and taken straightaway to the psychologist.

Sure, it's great to have kids who aren't happy-go-lucky cheerful all the time in a Brady Bunch kind of way. It is just sad to see a 15 year old threatening (and in some instances performing) bodily harm or belittling someone to the point where she comments that his self esteem must have taken a hit and he agrees. No parents or adult figures around to reprimand or even to scold them. When they are nearby, it's ignored in the script and the actor's aren't even showing signs of unhappiness. It's as if this is completely ok to do in society. A good natured joke to pick on someone is one thing. But this... it's something else.

I wish I had a video clip to point everyone to, especially of an episode I saw the other day. If you get a chance, catch one of these shows to see what I am talking about. It's bad enough we have Dora the Explorer yelling at everyone to locate some object that she's practically standing right on top of or which way to go on the map when there's only one route and three damn "adventures" waiting to be had.

But now we have a new generation of angry, yelling, mean spirited kids coming up apparently. Yeah I admit it makes me laugh. It's even somewhat refreshing from the overly giddy fresh faced kids of Silver Spoons and Full House. But still, I am 35 years old, they aren't. When kids think it's ok to bully and push other kids around in this manner, no, the programming needs to be changed. Because no matter how little tv your children watch, someone is allowing their kids to sit and become mindnumbingly dumb watching this crap. And those will more than likely be the kids to smash your kid's face on the playground, push them down in the hallway and yell obscenities all while doing it. Sure they can fight back but then everyone ends up in the principal's office or some parent gets out of control crazy and next thing you know, someone's mom is waving a pistol at soccer practice and everyone's lost their friggin' mind.

I don't want to generalize that all kids who watch these shows will become jerks but so far, it seems to be that way. At least, in my house. No matter how much I discuss, explain, question, guide, redirect, etc, they still think this is acceptable and appropriate behavior and it is not. Not for a 7 year old child anyway. I refuse to have my child described as a bully simply because she's acting out something she saw on television. There isn't any real lesson being taught in these programs, either. I am sure there's some moral lesson slightly floating at the surface. But it's not completely apparent in every episode.

Also, no, I don't think playing Lego Star Wars will make them think they're Han Solo or Princess Leia. But they see these near princesses with cool clothes, pretty hair and shimmery makeup singing and dancing and being completely rude and they think it's ok to do also. Sure, Ren and Stimpy puked and hurled and were gross and disgusting. Ren oftentimes yelled at Stimpy and called him names. But it was done with so much over-the-top hilarity, and it was a cartoon, you knew it wasn't how people behaved. Those shows were quoted, not mimicked. Kids didn't envy being a hairless 'asthma-hound chihuahua' or a weird cat with a blue nose.

Anyway, I guess my point is, there's no substitute for good old fashioned parenting. Television should be used as entertainment and as an educational resource. The rest is just crap that has to be harshly critiqued for those with young children with sponges inside their heads that soak up every word, phrase, tone, emotion and action. It's just a mess really.

*steps off soapbox*