The Dodge Caravan, featuring video heroin

The BBQ Pit
21

Converse with the kid? Here’s how a decent chunk of our conversation went when we drove to SDakota:

Kid: Are we there yet?
Me: No, we’re about 3 hours away from the hotel
Kid: I’m bored!
Me: Look outside - tell me what’s cool
Kid: Cow Cow Corn Cow MOM This is BORING
.
.
Kid: Are we there yet?
Me: No. Let’s play the license plate game
Kid: That game is BORING. I gotta pee.

Repeat ad nauseum for the ENTIRE DRIVE THROUGH SOUTH DAKOTA.

Yeah, I would’ve liked a DVD player. Her yammering was distracting me. Not exactly a good thing. I will admit those adverts are not the best, but don’t disparage a sometimes nanny so parents can get where they’re going alive.

22

Are DVDs going to be used as a last resort, or a first resort? Is a parent with an antsy kid going to think up something involving to do, or plug them in? Og knows that these days we don’t often get enough time to talk to our kids, are we going to use a long trip to do more of this, or make sure we don’t get bothered by them.

And I took long trips, and took my kids on long trips. My wife took the kids around the country in an RV without benefit of DVDs, by the way.

It’s a great country out there - are kids going to see it, or look at Ariel for the fiftieth time?

When we went on trips with our kids we played I Spy. We listened to Raffi. We played an impromptu version of a great board gam e where you come up with songs with a given word in them. We experimented with different types of music on the radio. Sometimes the older one invented games to play with the younger one. Some of the first reading they did was road signs. When they were older they played Gameboy, but even that is more interactive than staring at a TV.

Yeesh, our kids watch way too much TV as it is - we don’t need more.

23

[QUOTE=saoirse]
See my post below, and fuck off yourself.
[/QUOTE]

Your post didn’t actually answer either of my questions, so I’ll refuse your kindly invitation and reiterate mine.

ETA Oops, it *did * answer them, sorry. I have to ask though… exactly how fondly do you remember those trips? And does it really make one a bad parent to want a couple of freakin’ hours of quiet once in a while?

24

We don’t have an in-car DVD player, but WhyKid got a portable DVD player for Christmas. We’re letting - nay, encouraging - him to bring it along for our upcoming annual drive to New York. 12 hours (including stops) for a 14 year old and a toddler are pretty darn excrutiating. Has he managed it intact for the past 13 years without a DVD player? Yep. Will he be happier this year? Yep. Is he a mindless slack-jawed yokel as a result? Nope.

Like ANY technology, from toilet paper to Blackberries, this can be a good or a bad thing. (Try using half a roll of tp on one flush and see how enjoyable the result is.)

I do agree with **Jodi **that I’m a little uncomfortable with the advertiser’s equation of quietly staring at the TV = “good behavior”. It’s not good behavior, it’s LACK of behavior. It’s parents and teachers who label such “good behavior” who make everyone think their perfectly normal kid has ADHD.

The other thing that bothers me about the ads is that the kids get rewarded for being monsters by getting to watch a DVD. But if we’re looking to advertising to teach us parenting tips, we’re going to be chasing cartoon cereal characters through our kitchen and smiling while our babies throw spaghetti from their high chairs.

The LAST thing I’m going to do with noisy unruly kids is reward that behavior by turning on a DVD. But if we can remain civilized human beings, talk some, sing some, play the license plate game and I-spy (and be “well-behaved” while doing it) I see no problem in adding a DVD to the events of the very long, very cramped day. And yes, as a parent, this means anticipating when my kids have had it and suggesting the DVD *before *meltdown occurs. There is a difference between exhaustion or boredom induced melt-down and bad behavior.

ETA: I don’t like or think its a good idea for city driving. Not only is it not a very long trip, at which point all our arguments fall down and a little boredom IS a good thing, but as a driver, I find another car’s DVD player very distracting. I have enough to worry about in city traffic without being distracted by bright moving images out of the corner of my eye. It’s not so distracting on the highway when cars are further apart and there’s less visual clutter.

25

[QUOTE=Jodi]
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.
[/QUOTE]
I was responding to your point that they don’t show the family in the commercials on a long car trip.

They are selling the car. They don’t show people in the car on a long car trip because people hate long car trips. Companies realize that you don’t emphasize aspects of the use of a product (in this case a car) that people hate in your commercials.

I can’t think of any reason why listening to a book on CD, or listening to Raffi, are in any way superior (morallly, experientially, educationally) to watching a DVD.

26

[QUOTE=saoirse]
<snip>The tag line: “When kids get what they want, you get what you want.” <snip>
[/QUOTE]

This is the problem I have with commercials like these. Yes, all the best parenting is done by appeasement and giving the kids exactly what they want, as soon as they want it. I take this a little personally, having watched my sister and brother-in-law raise my nieces this way, and seeing the results in person. They are not good.

My husband and I have great long trips together - we spend a lot of quality time getting to know each other better, having long discussions, just enjoying each other’s company. I can’t imagine that we are the only people who do this. You know, I was going to say that I can see the value of dvd players for the back seat, but I just remembered my last long car trip, with my mom in the back seat. I learned things about her life that I had never known before from our long conversation while driving. Maybe a car dvd player is like most things; useful when used judiciously.

I still don’t like the tagline for the commercial. It’s obnoxious.

27

[QUOTE=Loach]
Ask your parents how they remembered those lovely trips. Ask them if they would have prefered a DVD player in the car.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t have to. My kids (they’re in high school, now) reminisce about the time I made two of them cry and “that vein showed up” in my forehead. They also remember the telephone wire game they made up, a song my duaghter added four verses to, and the subject of the argument that prompted the shouting.

28

Beats what my parents did:

“Have a Gravol, Larry.”

“But I feel fine.”

“No, take one. See, it says on the label, ‘For the prevention of car-sickness, take one tablet every ten kilometers.’”

(Not really.)

29

[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
I was responding to your point that they don’t show the family in the commercials on a long car trip.
[/quote]

No, instead they show kids charging around, screaming, basically out of control, and then completely pacified by a DVD player. What you haven’t explained is why that’s more appropriate than showing, for example, a family on a car trip enjoying all of the features of the product (the van) – windows to look out of, comfortable seats – including the DVD player.

So they’re showing badly behaved kids being subdued by movies because people like badly behaved kids? Or people like the idea of subduing them (rewarding them, actually, as WhyNot points out) using electronics instead of parenting? What part of this am I supposed to think is amazing marketing? And it’s complete BS that “they don’t show people on long car trips”; I’ve seen any number of car commercials which unrealistically show the Happy Camper family on excursions or trips – including one, recently, that ended with the dad being dropped off at home afterward, revealing that the parents were divorced but were able to get together amicably for the sake of the trip with the kids. “Wee! We’re happy and comfortable in our car on a trip!” is a frequent and venerable way to market cars. Get your kicks on Route 66.

This doesn’t make any sense to me at all. The company puts the DVD player in the car and then de-emphasizes that it’s meant to be used in the car? Not only does this not make sense, I think it’s factually inaccurate – these commercials don’t de-emphasize the fact the DVD player is in the car. But instead of showing it as an appropriate way to entertain kids for a couple hours on a car trip (along with doing other things), the commercials show it as a means to instantly pacify misbehaving children. That’s what I don’t like.

I already said that I wasn’t making an argument about the superiority of one form of appropriate entertainment over the other – though I also already said that it seems to me that if you are listening to a book, you can also be looking out the window, as opposed to the complete sensory immersion in the 400th viewing of Little Nemo. So in that sense ISTM obviously experientially superior. But parent your kids how you see fit. I don’t dislike DVD players in cars. I dislike how they’re being marketed in these commercials.

30

[QUOTE=Jodi]
No, instead they show kids charging around, screaming, basically out of control, and then completely pacified by a DVD player. What you haven’t explained is why that’s more appropriate than showing, for example, a family on a car trip enjoying all of the features of the product (the van) – windows to look out of, comfortable seats – including the DVD player.
[/quote]
IIRC, they do show the family in the car enjoying it. They don’t depict a long road trip. Why this is such a point of contention for you, I’m not sure, but I’ve lost interest in pursuing it. You’re getting all kinds of strange things that I haven’t said from what I did write about something that was a side matter for me to begin with.

31

[QUOTE=saoirse]
Yes, so we teach them that they must never be bored, that there must always be something passively entertaining in front of them.
[/QUOTE]

Quit complaining. It’s vitally important that children always be able to watch TV.

32

My question would be “is this really a selling point for the Dodge Caravan?”

Don’t most all minivans have optional DVD players nowdays? Or do they really think people are going to view the ad and think “wow, that’s a great feature. looks like it’s only on the Caravan. i need to buy the Caravan.”

That’s about as dumb as having a commercial for a Camry focused around “look! there’s seats in the back!”

33

[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
IIRC, they do show the family in the car enjoying it. They don’t depict a long road trip. Why this is such a point of contention for you, I’m not sure, but I’ve lost interest in pursuing it. You’re getting all kinds of strange things that I haven’t said from what I did write about something that was a side matter for me to begin with.
[/QUOTE]

These are the commercials I’m talking about:

If by “the family enjoying it” you mean the parents are riding along with the kids drugged into submission by the DVD player in the back seat, yes, that’s what they show. And that’s precisely what I don’t like. The commercial runs like this: Out of control kids in the cafeteria or school bus, who are instantly pacified by the DVD player’s emergence. Cut to a scene of the family riding along with the kids similarly pacified by the DVD player. The clear inference we are to draw is that you can stun your kids into submission in the car, if only you provide them with a DVD player.

I don’t like the tone of those commercials, that’s all. It’s not a huge “bone of contention” for me, but I can certainly see the OP’er’s point, and I see very little basis to tell him to fuck off over it. Not that you did. I have nothing against DVD players in vehicles, except that as a driver I find them distracting in the dark. I just don’t like the commercials. So enjoy your DVDs. :slight_smile:

34

[QUOTE=Hampshire]
My question would be “is this really a selling point for the Dodge Caravan?”

Don’t most all minivans have optional DVD players nowdays? Or do they really think people are going to view the ad and think “wow, that’s a great feature. looks like it’s only on the Caravan. i need to buy the Caravan.”

That’s about as dumb as having a commercial for a Camry focused around “look! there’s seats in the back!”
[/QUOTE]
Most vans also have fold down seating too, but I don’t see why it’s problematic to demonstrate that as a selling point. For me, there are three features that catch my eye about those commercials - $4,000 cash allowance; fold down seating; DVD player. None of those is novel or unique to the Caravan. Yet, I find them appealing and they make me consider a new Caravan to replace our Windstar.

35

[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
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.
.
[/QUOTE]

I was a single parent of a very active male child. When he was two, I took him on a trip (driving) from mid Michigan to West Virginia. When he was six and again when he was 10, I took him on a trip (driving) from Mid Michigan to south of Tampa. We didn’t have the in car DVD, of course (since he’s 23 now - you do the math). I was able to plan ahead and have a variety of activities for him to do while seated, belted into his car seat (at 2). We took a TV tray, a variety of toys, coloring books, book, puzzles, snacks etc. We chatted, I pointed things out on the road, on the road trips when he was 6 and 10, he was the navigator, looking at the trip map, looking forward to milestones like ‘when we get here, we get to flip the page and we’re half way there’.

We had fun. on the last trip (when he was 10), he had the camera, and took a lovely picture of the sunrise in KY. It can be done.

yea, I know. and I walked 10 miles in the snow uphill both ways to school, too.

36

Eh, what’s that? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you because I was playing with my Game Boy DS and listening to my iPod.

37

[QUOTE=wring]
I was a single parent of a very active male child. When he was two, I took him on a trip (driving) from mid Michigan to West Virginia. When he was six and again when he was 10, I took him on a trip (driving) from Mid Michigan to south of Tampa. We didn’t have the in car DVD, of course (since he’s 23 now - you do the math). I was able to plan ahead and have a variety of activities for him to do while seated, belted into his car seat (at 2). We took a TV tray, a variety of toys, coloring books, book, puzzles, snacks etc. We chatted, I pointed things out on the road, on the road trips when he was 6 and 10, he was the navigator, looking at the trip map, looking forward to milestones like ‘when we get here, we get to flip the page and we’re half way there’.

We had fun. on the last trip (when he was 10), he had the camera, and took a lovely picture of the sunrise in KY. It can be done.

yea, I know. and I walked 10 miles in the snow uphill both ways to school, too.
[/QUOTE]
We drive to St. Louis from Pittsburgh at least once every year, with kids who are now 12 and 6 years old. We have trays, art supplies, snacks, toys, handheld video games, personal CD players, and whatever else we can think of. My wife and kids cannot read in the car without getting slightly dizzy.

There is nothing left to be interested in along I-70 that we haven’t seen dozens of times. It just doesn’t change from year to year. You can’t really play I Spy at 70 miles per hour on the highway, unless you’re interested in spying the same green, blue and gray things over and over again, and I Spy barely holds the interest of my 6 year old any more. We have done the license plate thing, but what you always see is all of the midwestern states in 30 minutes, and then maybe most of the rest of the continguous US after about 6 hours. It just doesn’t hold up.

My kids aren’t particularly chatterers, and definitely not 12 hour chatterers.

Yet we’ve done it without DVDs. We all just get bored out of our skulls, and I see no reason, apart from sheer curmudgeonity, to object to DVDs.

38

[QUOTE=MissTake]

Kid: I’m bored!
Kid: That game is BORING.
Repeat ad nauseum for the ENTIRE DRIVE THROUGH SOUTH DAKOTA.
[/QUOTE]

Could have been worse. Could have been North Dakota

39

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I have enough to worry about in city traffic without being distracted by bright moving images out of the corner of my eye.
[/QUOTE]
You’re probably going to want to stay FAR away from the Las Vegas Strip.

40

[QUOTE=DianaG]
Got kids? Ever taken them on a six hour drive? If the answer to either of these questions is “no”, fuck off.
[/QUOTE]

I have to agree with this. Now, if there are two parents, one can keep the types entertained by various road games- for a while. But a sinlge parent must concentrate on driving thus the video heroin is *a safety feature.
*