I just want to point out that if your 5-yr-old daughter wants a damn Barbie and you can afford it, just get her a damn Barbie. No fair substituting Skipper, who back in my day had no tits. I hated that stupid Skipper. I cut off her hair.
Maybe the kid is saying that his mother doesn’t let him have toys to explain why he’s pawning credits and possibly even toys. Maybe that’s why he really doesn’t have any–he sells them. Maybe that’s why she watches him like a hawk–he can’t be trusted not to pawn the family silver or something. Maybe that’s why she homeschools–he’s been kicked out of school or mercenary-like behavior.
Could be the kid is evil and not the mother.
Also, this:
although mentioned somewhat in jest to get the Skipper point across, is something you should most definitely not do. If your 5-yr-old wants some crack and you can afford it…well, you get the point. That’s a role that too many parents disregard. They give their child whatever they want. And what they want may not always be the best for them.
In our house, we don’t have Winnie the Pooh books. Why? Words are consistently misspelled and written incorrectly and never corrected. I don’t want to have to go back and re-teach my child that “honey” is not spelled “hunny” and explain why Pooh can spell it that way but she can’t. She does have a giant stuffed Winnie the Pooh and Pooh sunglasses. Those things are fine–no misspellings on either.
Pooh books get traded in for new appropriate books at the local book store.
Oh my god…
You would deprive somone of Winnie in case they never learned to spell honey? In case at the age of 35 they didn’t know that the big grey things with trunks are called elephants?
I am gobsmacked. Every kid I hold dear gets a big fat collected, illustrated works of Milne before they are one year old. WP is a gift to be given to a young mind, not something to protect a child from. Let me guess, the merchandising you have bought is the Disney Pooh (in all senses)?
Well geez, evilbeth, I sure hope you never let your kids watch televised news. They’re completely incapable of using past-tense verbs even when appropriate.
Oh, and cover their eyes when you drive past billboards. Most of them use English poorly. Also keep them out of public restrooms - have you seen how many spelling errors there are in most graffiti? You may want to investigate your local school district, as Jr. H.S. bathrooms are likely to be particularly bad.
And whatever you do, don’t let them anywhere near SDMB - chock full 'o errors, grammar- and logic-wise.
Mennonite here. Lapsed, but I don’t spose that’s relevant to my childhood. I had toys growing up, and I don’t know of any Mennonites that didn’t, though certain types of toys are frowned upon.
Of course, there are Mennonites and then there are Mennonites, but even the most conservative groups wouldn’t have a blanket proscription on toys.
First of all, there’s a big, fat fucking difference in your kid incidentally seeing stuff in the big, bad world and deliberately introducing it to them.
My child will be exposed to plenty of people being rude in the world but I’m not going to buy her books that show her how to be rude to other people.
My opposition is not without basis. There is no excuse for something geared toward children (who are learning with everything they do) to deliberately misspell something without bothering to correct it.
So far as letting her watch televised news? No, I don’t do that either. Not because of the illiterate individuals but because she is not remotely old enough to understand what is going on.
At this stage, she is still learning her numbers and letters–so I prefer to keep books that deliberately have letters written backward away from her to avoid any confusion until we can teach her the right way letters are supposed to go.
My opposition to Pooh is age-appropriate. When she’s 12, it won’t make a fuckload of difference if she sees letters written backward and words spelled incorrectly because she can recognize that they are wrong and move on. At this age, she can’t. I’m trying to limit exposure to things she cannot comprehend and figure out until she is old enough to be able to. This is a foreign concept?
You know, there is a middle ground between "OMG, what about the children?! and “So long as she’s not bugging me, I don’t care what she does.” It’s called being an effective parent. More people should try it.
Possibly the writers of this drivel came from parents who didn’t pay any attention to what their children were learning in terms of written language development.
Just when I think the world has no more humor in it. Thanks evilbeth for the best laugh I have had all day.
I do think quietman indicated that the kids in question are pretty young. I don’t know about your corner of the glovbe but in mine they don’t allow kids to pawn things for cash or credits.
By 12, your daught isn’t going to give a rats ass about Pooh, Milne or Disney. IF she is normal she’ll be thinking of the latest boy band, makeup and clothes and who gives a fuck about how honey is or isn’t spelled.
I will be giggling about your post for days!
So will I, Krisfer…when I’m not shuddering at the fact that the poster seemed to have forgotten to garnish it heavily with irony. Or sarcasm–either one will do. For a second I thought you were being sarcastic, evilbeth…until I saw that it extended over several posts. Way to wreck a potential satirical goldmine.
I don’t get it. If it’s just one word, can’t you just tell your daughter that it’s not spelled that way in real life? Hell, if it’s more…you can do the same thing. Believe me–I read a lot as a child and I still do. If your kid reads other things, then believe me, she’ll see honey written the right way. I refuse to believe that A. A. Milne and a pipe of crack hold the same amount of destructiveness in a young child’s life.
Thanks Zoggie.
God I am an awful parent. Bear has not only had Pooh but a Game boy and a Playstation. And he and I spent 31 dollars on books Saturday… yep I suck as a parent.
evilbeth the leap from a desire for a Barbie and lighting up a crack pipe is pretty tenuaous… if not downright mean spirited and asinine. Just because I bought Bear computer game while I was out shopping doesn’t mean he is going to be a crackhead. It seemed only fair… I wanted to charge a CD on my over used credit card. Would have been far crueler to bring home the CD after telling him I had no money to buy him a game.
Is there any fat, fucking evidence Winnie the Pooh is bad for kids’ reading comprehension? Honestly, I’ve never heard of something so absurd.
Of course, the works of A.A. Milne are rife with violence and profanity and whatnot. Why, I have been unable to spell “hunny” the right way my whole life. Damn my parents! Damn Pooh Bear! Damn Eeyore, the font of all manic depression!
You’re a scream. This IS a joke, right, like the stories about parents boycotting Sesame Street because Oscar was so grouchy?
Ok, I can understand if the mom doesn’t want them to have a million toys…especially toys that ‘play’ for you. While I have no problem with legos and such, well, those aren’t my kids. The point has been made that they do have some stuff to play with.
What does make me curious is the Yu-gi-oh cards. If those are like Pokeman cards, those are pure evil garbage. The manufacturer should be shot for inducing such behaviors in children.
My nephew was mad for pokeman. Simply had to ‘get them all’ (or what ever their logo is). He had books and books filed with cards. I saw him and his friends playing with them and it stunned me. These things weren’t toys… they were commodities.
I recall him crying to tears over not being allowed to spend $50.00 on ONE card. That’s just crazy. My Nephew-in-law collects Yu-gi-oh cards. He gave a list to my mom-in-law of cards he wanted to have. Imagine my horror when a total of 25 cards ran over $200.00!! I informed my mom-in-law and she, too, was shocked. He also wailed when he didn’t get the cards.
Now, I recall having cabbage patch kids as a kid and how ‘hot’ they were.The difference, IMO, is that at least me and my pals played with ours and loved them truly. They were never treated like a hot stock item. I would never imagine selling mine or trading.
So, I wonder if the mom knows he has them. It just seems strange to me that ‘toys’ are bad but Yu-gi-oh is ok.
I also question the child selling the voucher instead of the mom.
Pooh strikes again!
Son of a Pooh!
Returnn of Pooh!
Oops, I Pooh’d myself.
Shit, there goes Roald Dahl as well…
You know, I don’t think A.A. Milne ever spelled “honey” incorrectly except when he was directly quoting Pooh’s writing, and he used the correct spelling frequently. A typical passage:
Of course, if by “Winnie-the-Pooh books,” evilbeth means the Disney-produced abominations, I can only applaud her decision.
As an update:
There are no Legos.
They are who they are…and weird is better then breaking into my house for crack money.
I’m sure if Madame DeFarge had a computer or believed in the internet and had posted here, it would have sounded EXACTLY like Nametag’s snarky post. I was halfway through an equally snarky reply when I decided not to stoop to that level. Besides, anyone that would think that raising a child to be Happy is ‘wasting their childhood’ <verb tense change mine> speaks volumes in and of itself.
As for me, I’ll be fine as long as she doesn’t try to raise my children. As a friend said,
"She’ll just be known as the local loony, her children will be pitied, and her name will be whispered rather than spoken.
Eventually, she’ll be burned as a witch and you will parcel her land and possessions amongst the neighbourhood association. It happens in suburbs everywhere. "
Yes, it’s the Disney Pooh picture books I have opposition too. My child is too young for anything but picture books right now.
You know, evilbeth one of the threads that runs through the original Pooh books is that Pooh is loved and valued, and sometimes manages to solve problems other people can’t, even though he doesn’t always understand things and his spelling can be a bit wobbly.
[However, Disney Pooh stuff sucks, largely. And one of the major reasons that it sucks is that it is oversanitized so as not to be offensive or challenging to anyone.]