Depriving Our Children

Sitting with the kids this afternoon found me watching the slow shows that are offered on PBS. Daughter mentions how most cartoons are all for adults. She means the ones that I refuse to let them watch. Bart Simpson, The Family Guy, King of the Hill, etc. So I told her, she would've loved being a kid on Saturday morning when I was growing up. We used to watch The Gummy Bears, Fraggle Rock, Smurfs, Loony Tunes, Muppet Babies and those were just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. Now on Saturday mornings they have the pleasure of watching news shows first thing in the morning (Weekend Today) before moving on to some "educational" cartoons and then to shows like The Suite Life of Zach and Cody. There have been so many "people" saying children don't need to waste their time watching cartoons and such. When you really think about it, we watched them growing up and chances are those same "people" that don't think our children should have that pleasure probably also watched them. I think we all turned out ok and I hate that my children don't have the pleasure of getting up on Saturday, fixing themselves a bowl of cereal or a pop-tart before sitting down in front of the tv to watch the gummy bears or smurfs teach them about being a good person. Granted, kids probably do watch entirely too much tv and mine are no different (working on that), but they also do a lot of homework during the week, more so than we did. Why shouldn't they have the same type of cartoons and Saturday mornings that we used to have?