Last night the kids were watching a show on the Disney channel. Apparently the boy in the show is adopted. He approaches adoptive mom as she is leaving for a trip and says he needs her help. She says sure and he says he wants to know about his birth mother.
Immediately the mom character starts shifting around her body posture. She does not meet the kids eye. She asks him if this can wait till she gets back from her trip. . . or when he gives her grandchildren.
I was incensed. I confess I did not watch the rest of the show so I don't know how it played out. But I did talk with my kids about how angry it made me to walk through the living room and see that. KC said that he was glad that I wasn't like that character. That I took his need seriously and answered his question right away. And that I didn't hide from it.
While i am glad that my kids see that, I am concerned that a far wider population probably saw that dreck. First of all to turn anything about adoption and first families into a comedy is pretty much against my grain. While our lives have comedic moments, I don't think how we came together or what my kids lost in the coming together is comedic.
I wonder if people subliminally take away a message that this is not something you ask your family about. I wonder if parents think, hey, see people don't like/want/need to talk about this.
Our children are fragile, wonderful and magical beings. They deserve the best of who we are and if we don't give them that by sharing all of their story, we have broken trust.
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2 comments:
I'm pretty sure we saw the same episode and actually my kids have seen it many times. It gave us a great spring board to talk about issues. I use to censor more but now I let the kids see the good, the bad and the ugly and we talk about the sexism, homophobia, racism and other things that we see. Age appropriately. Disney always gives us pause.....
After I got over being angry, I agree that it was a good springboard. I was thinking more about a child seeing it who might be uneasy about broaching the subject and how that could make things harder than they needed to be. Or someone like Fiona who has developmental issues who would only take away from that the negativity in the mom's body posture. She is strongly able to read body language even when she can not totally get the gist of other stuff.
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