Funny, I already taught my daughter to whip cream into butter. I learned how to make butter when I was quite young too. We make our own whipped cream and learning to tell when it is about to turn into butter is essential to getting it just right. I am also teaching her to sew by hand and many other old fashioned skills. I learned a lot of these when I was young, and you know, when I did find myself without much money, some of them were invaluable. Also, I find the more skills I teach her, the easier she learns.
There’s nothing in particular wrong with books, but I’m talking more about the child learning to cope with a boredom based situation. Sometimes, you’re not going to be able to have an entertainment source in front of you, if a child never, ever, has to deal with that situation, when do they develop the skills to handle it?
Once again, the family shown in the van was nowhere near the interstate.
Also, these commercials ran, three times in an hour during prime time the night before last and described no other feature of the product. So they spent $100,000 a minute to tell us about a feature which the average family will only use for 12 hours a year?
No. They advertised a feature that the average family will use however they deem appropriate for their family.
Now, if you changed that to “…video heroine”, heck, I’d let the kids drive.
I told my kids to listen to the road noise - if you let your mind wander, you can make it sound like anything you like - any piece of music or anything at all (try it - it really works). Saved me a fortune because they wanted iPods.
I was wondering how parents with several kids would decide on which DVD to play. Boys & girls, toddlers through young teens–how often would they agree?
In my day, we could complain about who touched whom, who hit whom, etc. Safety restraints–a good idea–do limit those “amusements.”
As a non-parent, I can see how the DVD would help for long trips. And even the shorter trips I remember–through miles of absolutely featureless Texas Coastal Prairie.
And I have too, what’s your point? She still needs to know where to find it in the supermarket. It’s not about eliminating old ways and teachings, it’s about adding new ones to them. It’s not about never singing in the car with your kids, it’s about enjoying the modern convenience of a DVD player and being grateful that my children don’t have to work as hard and suffer as much as I did. Which was, of course, far less then my mother did, and she less than hers.
It’s funny you should mention that; my mom was raised on a mixed farm where they were pretty much self-sufficient. My grandma had eight kids and was a farmwife who did just about everything herself. According to my mom, they worked LESS and had MORE time than modern families with two working parents do. There’s something funny going on these days, and we don’t even realize it.
This is a wonderful topic I’d be glad to jabber on about, 'cause I agree with you (and it mostly has to do, I think, with the increased standards of living and cleanliness - my great-grandmother had a three room house and 1 cooking pot, of course housecleaning and doing the dishes took less time!) - but the point stands for THIS thread that DVD players in the car on long trips are easier on everyone. The closest to an argument anyone anti-DVD player has come up with is that easier might not be better.
Cars in commercials are never anywhere near the interstate. They are either in fantasy cities or towns, or perched on the top of a mountain somewhere.
But don’t bet that the average family will use them for only 12 hours a year. I see DVDs on screens while driving home from work, and no one in his or her right mind plans a vacation trip through 880 at 6 PM. I suspect that there is a lot of “it’s half an hour to the mall, plug in” going on.
That’s what I believe, too (by the way, nothing personal).
No, actually, the point of this thread is that the DVD player is being used as a child narcotic for any car trip, although for the one or two long-distance car trips a family may take in a year, some think it’s defensible.
Where did I say what the point of the thread is? I said that MY point - times change and we need to teach our kids manners and responsible use of the technology of today, in addition to that of yesteryear - stands for this thread, regardless of what I might agree about how we work more now than in the “good old days” and returning to simpler ways might be best for all of us in another thread. Ain’t nobody cleaning house during car trips.
I didn’t say anything at all about the point of the thread, only reiterated my point from a previous post. 
And yes, I see a lot of people using them on short trips, which I’ve already condemned in a previous post.
Yeah, kids today are spoiled. In my day we have license plate bingo and we liked it!
We also had that game where your brother tries to touch you and you scream and yell “Moooom! He’s touching me! Make him stop touching me!” and he says “I’m not touching her!” as he holds his finger an inch away from you. Then you’d see how long it took for them to threaten to pull over and beat the crap out of you or threaten to turn around and go home. Bonus points for having dad yell.
Good times.
We have an older Dodge Caravan (1998). We made it to Orlando in 12 hours with one stop in Talahassee. Two kids, 5 and 8. No DVD, heck, no air conditioning. Middle of July last year. No problems from the kids, they entertained each other with talking and playing games with each other. So, it doesn’t have to only happen “back in the pre-tech” days. Kids today can still take long trips without having to be “jacked-in” all the time. I have to wonder if other parents ever wonder why their kids have to be entertained with high-speed imagery all the time? Maybe they should be weaned from that. I agree with some of the posters above that there will be times when they will be in a situation when, god forbid, they have to actually stop and think and take things in once in a while.
They’ll learn it in some class in school, like the rest of us did. If not there, they’ll learn it when they get a job that involves going to meetings.
Or waiting at the doctor’s office.
Or in line at the grocery store.
Or at the dinner table when they’re done eating and all the grown ups are talking.
Or waiting for their meal at a restaurant.
Or at a dumb old funeral of some aunt they’ve never met.
Or at Mom’s office when she runs in “just for a second” and spends 45 minutes cornered by her assistant.
Or standing on the street while Dad jabbers on to some guy he hasn’t seen in 12 years.
Really, if the car is the only place your kids ever have to learn to be bored, they’re astoundingly lucky kids!