I’ve seen two different commercials for these minivans. Each one features a group of kids acting boisterous, and an aduult in authority flipping down a video screen. Immediately the kids the kids stop making any noise and stare slack-jawed at the screen. Then we see the the minivan, unlike the cafeteria of the schoolbus, actually has one of these for the back seat, and we see the parents riding along smiling, while the kids are sitting silently in the back seat. The tag line: “When kids get what they want, you get what you want.”
What the fuck? Are these parents so afraid of their children that they have no other control on their behavior than to turn on a DVD? Are they so uninterested in their children that they’d rather have the kids zoning out with The Lion King than actually, you know, participating the world?
Children are supposed to be energetic. That’s kind of their job. That can make it difficult for parents sometimes, but the idea that you should “give them what they want” (did they ask for a lifetime of poor health and obesity? Did they ask to get their education in what it means to be an adult from DVDs?) If you dislike children that much, or if you’re that incapable of exerting any kind of authority, you shouldn’t have them. I was going to end this with, “Only bad parents buy Chrysler automobiles,” but I thought that was overreaching. Parents who are swayed by this commercial, though, need to take some classes at the very least.
Are you aware that this is for a DVD to be used in a car? The last place I want my kids to be energetic is in the back seat of the car, especially when we are on a 12 hour drive to St. Louis.
Hell, I get bored shitless with watching the land flatten out and pass by along I-70, and I’m driving.
In terms of exercise, I don’t know what exercise you are planning, but I don’t think I could get my kids to do a bunch of isometrics for several hours.
I think the commercials are silly for suggesting that kids in a cafeteria or school bus would care about a television screen period, let alone one that they can’t even see, but that seems like a different objection than yours.
Yes, so we teach them that they must never be bored, that there must always be something passively entertaining in front of them.
You have the power of speech, I presume? And your children as well? You think a long trip is rough with two kids? When I was young we had six kids in the car. Somehow my parents managed to keep us from ripping the car apart. My kids managed to survive a long distance trip without a freakin’ in-car movie, too.
Wow – you seem really upset – not that I don’t understand what your on about but it is after all a commercial, something generally something not known for reality or substance. You sure you don’t have some deep seeded automotive/dvd issue going on ?
Dealing effectively with boredom is something that has at least some measure of value. Society today does have a habit of bombarding kids with continuous stimulation in an effort to keep them from getting bored and fidgety.
I agree with you. However, the problem isn’t just with children. Look at any public space that has a TV and adults will be watching it and it won’t matter what is on. There seems to be some sort of conditioning to disengage the brain and stare when the TV comes on.
I love my in-car DVD, complete with headphones. I can listen to what I like and my kids can either listen or watch what they like. On long trips (1.5-2+ hours) the kids are allowed to watch a DVD and it is blissful silence. Otherwise, it is family activity, talk, games, or music.
Call it what you like, disparage my parenting skills, profess that you have well-behaved non-annoying kids, but I feel that my right to entertain my kids with a DVD in the car is more important than the 2nd Amendment.
If that is a problem for the OP, please talk to my representative: Mr. Heywood U. Bloughme
I sort of agree…on the other hand, now that we’re required to keep our kids in the backseat until they’re frickin 13, I don’t know that I can object to giving them something to do. When I was a kid, I sat on the hump, and leaned forward to see what was in front of us, and talk with whomever was in the front seat. Now my kid is so far away I need a damn intercom to talk to her. So if she wants to watch Toy Story on the trip to New Jersey…shrug…I’m not going to sweat it. She doesn’t watch TV in every car on every drive to every place. Just the long trips where she’s strapped in like a damn mental patient.
How do you teach someone to never be bored? Boredom happens.
In my day…
Look, before you blow a head pipe, cranky old man, we’ve actually never had a DVD player in the car for these trips, and we’ve survived. But I call bullshit on your idea that any humans can happily pass the time talking for 12 hours. That is just pure fucking nonsense to expect from four adults (at least, if only one of them is a woman), let alone four members of a family, let alone if two of them are children.
And I don’t regard it as any more moral or superior that we’ve done it without a DVD player than if we had one. I’d probably seem like a real prick if I copped that kind of attitude.
I agree with the OP about the commercials. I personally don’t care how you entertain your kids on long car rides and can certainly understand that a movie might be preferable to wriggling/fighting/whining interspersed with Dad threatening to pull this car over.
But the commercials do appear to be saying that (1) “good behavior” for children = slack-jawed mindlessness and (2) the best way to achieve “good behavior” is to stick the kids in front of a TV. It’s like “See? See how quickly you can achieve compliant behavior?” It does exactly equate the DVD player with darting the kids with a tranquilizer dart: bad behavior -> tranquilization -> “good behavior” (i.e., sedation). And for those of you saying “you trying taking small kids on a long car trip,” allow me to point out that the commercials don’t feature a family on a long car trip.
What the commercials are selling is a way to sedate your kids. If your rejoinder is that sometimes mental sedation is okay or even desirable, fine with me, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the commercials that make that a central selling point of their product.
As the parent of a bright, interactive 9-year-old, I love the in-car DVD. MilliCal seems to have inherited Pepper Mill’s inability to read in the car (not something I’m afflicted with, thank Og. It makes them nauseous). After hours of “I Spy”, round-robin storytelling, and various car games we’ve made up, it’s nice to have that DVD to kill a couple of the hours in the 6-hour commute to either of MilliCal’s grandparent’s houses.
I’m sure you must be aware of this, but nobody would ever buy a product that was associated with the feeling of being on a long car trip with the family.
One of the last trips we did we listened to a book on CD (one of the Harry Potter books). Is that superior to putting in a DVD? If so, why?
What? What, precisely, is the DVD in the car for? Judging solely from the responses of this thread, and as if I didn’t have my own opinion on the obvious, it appears that the long car trip is the exact purpose of having it. So are you saying that it is more effective and appropriate to market it as tool to correct bad/boisterous behavior (which is how it is presented in the commercials), that it is to market it by showing it put to its intended use? This makes no sense to me. The whole point is that it improves the long car trip. That’s what you market.
Well, since you asked, IMO it is superior, since when you are listening you can also be looking at something else, like the scenery. But since my problem is not with the DVD player but rather with how it is marketed in these commercials, I don’t think I have to judge the moral superiority of DVDs v. CDs. If you marketed the latest CD by showing kids hopping around hyperactively and out of controlled, and then showed the CD being popped in, and then showed the kids sitting literally slack-jawed like brain-dead little zombies, I wouldn’t think much of that as a means to market the CD, either.