The Lizzie McGuire Dilemma

We have 3 Lizzie McGuire DVDs.  They were given to the Penguin (with piercings) when she was 10 or 11 and she watched them to death before she outgrew them, and they have been sitting on the shelf pretty much ever since.

The Chicken and her almost 10 year old friend from next door asked yesterday if they could watch these DVDs and I thought "yeah why not, they're a bit silly but fairly harmless"  After all, they are getting to that age and they are not going to want to watch  The Wiggles for the rest of their lives...it's appropriate don't you think?  The boys...being my boys, who will watch anything as long as it's on a screen, happily settled in to watch too.

This morning the rain had set in and they couldn't play outside and along with the fact that I had a giveaway to launch I just let them watch it again!

Somewhere during the program Chicken pipes up and says..."they're pretty rude to their parents aren't they?" so I sat and actually watched for a bit...and yes, they are pretty rude to their parents!

So the next question?  Are they really that harmless after all?  We've had a significant increase in bad attitude and whinging from the menagerie this weekend and it's really hard to tell how much of it is from what they are watching on TV and how much of it is just from it being the end of the first week of school and the kids being tired and getting settled back into the routine of it all.

 

And now for the dilemma!  We are probably going to find that there is some undesirable element in all programs aimed at preteen girls, so do we then stop them watching them? 

I recently took Chicken to a birthday party for a girl in her class.  All the girls there were 7 or 8 years old and yet it wasn't really a little kids party.  Chicken is a very responsible, grown up girl and if I'm honest, I don't think I could cope without her.  She helps me out every single day, often without being asked and for the most part when life is not really all that fair it just rolls off her back.  And yet at this party she stuck out like a sore thumb.  She is taller than the other girls in her class, but she seemed younger.
When the other girls were all singing and dancing to popular music she joined in but it was obvious, to me at least, that she didn't know any of the songs.  Also the fact that she was dressed in kids clothed, not a smaller version of what you might see on a teenager.
Now the latter may not be such a bad thing, but it really broke my heart to think that she may end up not fitting in amongst her peers, especially if it is due to something I have done.

So what to do???

 For the time being, Lizzie McGuire is here to stay (albeit with some time restrictions perhaps) but it's the kind of dilemma I foresee myself facing many many times over the coming years.

And I will probably second guess my self every single time!!!