for the longest time, we’ve tried to distract jan from superhero figures. we considered them to be inappropriate for his age and really, what good would he pick up from them? in germany, it was relatively easy, as there were lots of other options. there were a variety of well-made children shows that didn’t feature violence and fighting as its main plot. yes, he was fascinated with stories of vikings and knights, and we did encourage that, but there was a wide array of films and literature on the subject which were adapted to be suitable even for preschoolers.

whenever we would visit the philippines, though, it has always been tricky to find suitable shows on tv. aside from nickelodeon and disney channel, there was little else to choose from, particularly if you’re trying to stay away from the japanese cartoons all other kids seem to go gaga about. here in singapore, we’re faced with the same problem. power rangers, ben ten, spiderman, batman, teen titans — three months ago, jan didn’t even know them. now he’s obsessed. it is so pervasive, not only on tv, we knew we were facing a losing battle when we implemented a restriction on them in our household.

power rangers birthday cake

so fine. we finally gave in. we figured that the more we ban it, the longer it will take for jan to overcome this fascination. give in, treat it as a phase, and hopefully, the novelty will wear off. we still have rules, though. we’re ok with books and comics (jan can’t read yet), but we’re still limiting tv and videos. for his 5th birthday, he got a hero-packed celebration: a power ranger birthday cake, spiderman pencils and stationery, ben ten flip-flops, a transformers robot and a couple of power rangers dvds he’d been eyeing for the last 3 weeks. we were really hesitant with the last item, but he did earn it from a reward chart we have been working on, so there it went.

have we been wimps by giving in? most likely. we can’t all be like superheroes, eh?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!


This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at and is filed under jan-i-mania, parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.