Little Boys and Disney Channel

I am reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret. In the story, a young boy named Hugo Cabret lives alone in a Paris train station. He has no parental guidance.

Almost everything we know we learn from out parents. We learn what is suppose to be good or bad, smart, silly, a joke, or serious. Hugo was lucky enough to have a parent for the 10 years of his life, but there are a lot of kids who don’t. It’s interesting to think about where these children get their influences for the rest of their lives. Where do they get their values and morals? Somehow, from somewhere, these children do grow up.

I recently have had an eight-year-old move into my house. He is engrossed with every show on Disney Channel. Being someone who use to watch Disney Channel, I couldn’t believe how much I missed as a child. These shows are ridiculous. They show these situations where there will be backstabbing or cheating or something, and then the characters will go around solving the problem in the worst way, and then everything’s fine.

Small children don’t understand that the problems and results they are watching are scripted. Things wouldn’t actually work out the way that it does in the show. I realize I took a lot from those shows, why shouldn’t this eight-year-old?

You see kids growing up in the modern world, and you just see all the influences they take in. Their parents don’t always have control. Hugo may have had a father to teach him, but now he is alone and he has to be smart enough to apply what he knows to his life.