Well, I made one of those lovely mistakes last night that will most likely end up in some sort of therapy session … my daughter’s to be exact. And while I recognize these sessions are inevitable (my legendary mothering mistakes know no bounds), I hate to give the kid more ammo.
Here it is … my 12 year old is growing up. I, of course, am both happy and sad about this. I will say, she is a crack up. She is sarcastic like me and has a great sense of humor. I enjoy being able to laugh with her. And at 12 years old, you can do that. At 15? I don’t know. One bridge at a time …
Anyway, she has been bugging me to watch TV shows that are more (her words) “age appropriate”. While she still laughs at Phineas and Ferb and loves our Gravity Falls family nights, she would like to be able to watch more “sophisticated” fare, I guess. And by sophisticated, she means reality TV garbage.
I, personally, don’t watch this crap. I prefer other crap – like 30 minute sitcoms that make me laugh and then later make me depressed that I never let loose and had any fun in my 20’s. Or zombies eating each others brains out … ya know, educational stuff like that. A zombie apocalypse is imminent people!!
But seriously, I tried to be open to her suggestions, I really did. Her big push was for Dance Moms. And I don’t know why, but all I could picture in my mind were these crazy moms who prance their daughters around like dolls and psychologically scar and ruin their lives. All of them having the face of JonBenet Ramsey. Ugh. Her argument – easily my favorite of them all – is that “everyone watches it!!!”.
I will be honest, at times I have asked if certain kids are watching it because I know their moms are WAY more on the ball than I am. They probably did all the research and double cross checked with common sense media. I trust they did the leg work, so I’ll ride their coattails. But it’s been getting hairier as these girls get older (no pun intended). And I’ll be honest, I don’t know what’s ok and what’s not. And in my rigidly black and white mind, I just want to say No to everything – just in case.
I nixed Dance Moms. She hates me, blah, blah, blah. But I wanted her to know that I had heard what she said and am open to her seeing some shows that are for the older set. Now here comes the best decision I’ve made in awhile (and by “best”, I mean the worst). I chose to let her watch the show New Girl.
So my good friend turned me on to this show just recently and it is pretty stinking funny. I’m not a big “quirky, dorky girl as a main character” show-watcher, but this show pulls it off really well. Plus I always love a little angst … and there’s definitely some of that with two of the main characters … I want Nick and Jess together sooooooo bad (now I sound like a 12 year old). I watched a couple episodes and didn’t think that they were too bad – for my Munch anyway. So I suggested it to her and asked if she wanted to watch the next episode with me. She was excited and agreed. We even did popcorn in bed and made it a full blown “girl thing”.
Mistake #1: In the rush (why??) to make Munch feel heard, I did little “research” on this show.
Mistake #2: We start out with an episode titled “Naked” … nuff said.
Mistake #3: I let her watch the WHOLE episode, in the hopes that it would get more “appropriate” as each minute went by … it did the opposite.
Mistake #4: I attempted to hide the laptop screen with my hand at certain questionable parts (actually, there were NO questions about these parts). Looking like a 15 year old watching a sex scene on Skinamax is not my proudest mothering moment – although, my hand was on the screen this time, not my face.
Mistake #5: Muttering “oh my god” every time someone said “penis” during the episode. And, if you’ve seen that episode, it’s a lot. Thank god Munch has two younger brothers … this word is not foreign in our house.
So, after the torture of watching this 22 minute episode with my 12 year old daughter, I promptly shut the laptop and pronounced that this show probably wasn’t a good one for her.
Her response: “Wow, Mom. That show was REALLY inappropriate. I can’t believe you let me watch it.”
Sooooooo … Dance Moms it is!!!!
normallevelofcrazy 