Entertaining kids

Entertaining a 2 year old can be somewhat exhausting at times and we as adults can basicly humiliate our souls to keep them entertained. Thank goodness for new technology especially the internet and youtube.

Now as new parents we said from the start our child would not be a couch potato, and with all the media telling us how bad TV is for our children we went out and even bought a Practica box. In this box we have all sorts of toys, cards wood block and a complete manual on what to do on every stage of your child’s development. I 'll be honest it's a total fucking waste of money, not because I think the stuff don't work, in fact I think if you do as they tell you to it should do wonders for your child's development, but more because who got time for it? Even finding that little time required can be hard.

I think we stuck to it for about a month before throwing in the towel. We play with our girl and she gets lots of attention and stimulation and from the beginning of this year we send her to a creche. Now there she gets all the stimulation she needs and we can concentrate on just playing with her.

Now any parent who keeps his or her 2 year old child entertained without a TV, some dvd's or music are just plain awesome plus you must be dead tiered at night. She found a balance between playing with us and watching her dvd's and music. Some day's she love watching her shows other days she prefer playing outside.

The media makes this big hype over the violence in shows and blame a lot of the problems on that, however I feel, and I'm not saying I'm right, by the time a child is 10 they know whats right and wrong and can make rationale decisions. So when watching shows with violent or “harmful” content they can distinguish between what is acceptable and what's not. Just note that I feel parental guidance or PG should always be applied.

As small children learn what's right and wrong they can get confused and this is where I feel cartoons play a big role. For my 2 year old that animated character is real, it lives and its her best friend. If we show her cartoons where one character shoots the next, she will see that as acceptable, as she doesn't know the difference yet, plus what's the harm if you shoot someone he is colored black then returns to normal.

That why we are very careful on what cartoons we show her, no violence in cartoons is the best. But the best entertainment is animated music videos for kids. It keeps her busy and we as parents learn new songs to sing to our kids even if we sound like we dying a thousand deaths. To find these you can look no further than youtube and thank all those brave enough to post their kiddy songs. Here is one of Alizee's favorite music videos  Pity there aren’t afrikaans videos like this