I sit here and listen as the blaring television encroaches my thoughts. Everything I ever wanted for my children, everything I ever tried to teach them and tried to help them understand about life is being trampled on with bright colors, zippers, catchy music, and lip gloss. Right here, in my living room, on a device that I pay for.

Here are some of the basic human guidelines I tried to model for my children:

1. It is important to understand where people are coming from and to understand why they act the way they do. Never jump to judgements and conclusions that you did not take the time to understand or care about.
2. It is important to learn things the hard way so you can build critical thinking skills and learn how to work hard.
3. It is important to read and know things about the world around you so that you can build your own thoughts and opinions about things like politics and religion.
4. It is important to become your own person and to disregard the negative and sometimes positive opinions other people have about you.
5. It is important to be kind and to never treat someone like they are less than human.
6. It is important to be honest in everything you do.
7. It is important to be the very best person that you already are. Not a person you are not and never could be. In order to do this, you have to love the person you are.
8. It is important to work hard and live an honorable life that encourages positive growth and harmony for all of the humans around you.
9. Never let anyone have power over you. You are a strong individual who thinks, feels, and you deserve to be in charge of your own life. Do not accept abuse of any kind in your life.
10. Never let anyone decide who you will be. Mistakes and bad things happen, but they do not necessarily form who we are, they just add character to the person we become.

And then, Disney channel, Nickelodeon, cartoons, music videos, ya novels, and commercials all take those ideals and twist them creating a hugely confused preteen and young adult.

1. Understand where people come from? Never. Instead let’s gossip and try to label everyone as mean or nice. She’s the popular mean girl, we need take her down, she deserves it. He’s the bully with the leather jacket, or the stupid kid who doesn’t always get it? Let’s date him or use him to get what we want. That sounds archaic but I swear I saw it on Liv and Maddie just the other day. Stereotypes are the feed mill of preteen entertainment. Ask Taylor Swift, she knows all about the nerdy girl on the bleachers.
2. Learn things the hard way? No way. We have computers, rich uncles, best friends who live in beach houses with famous dads…I could go on. If these shows have kids working hard on something, it is to make money, to get even, or some ridiculous need to be famous. Every show, I swear, is about getting famous as a singer, an actress, an athlete, youtube…I digress.
3. I have never seen any kids learning anything on any movie or show, really, geared for kids, unless they are the nerdy weird geeks, or the kids in classroom based shows. Occasionally, you will see kids building and learning things, thanks Phineas and Ferb (except the whole sneaking behind parent’s backs and lying things) or shows like Girl Meets World and Dexter’s Laboratory, but again the nerdy kids are weird and a little creepy. The bandwagon ideology is the way, every single day. We learn about news from gossip sites, twitter, and Facebook. And I don’t mean in real life, I mean in the stuff my kids are watching.
4. Okay, so become your own person. That seems like the typical idea in all kid’s shows. HOWEVER, usually when these kids are trying to be their own person a few things happen: there is a ridiculous makeover scene, some kind of desperate need to acquire a significant other, some need to impress a parent, teacher, peer, or just an absolute fail at trying to be unique or strong in who they are. Clueless. Easy A. Princess Diaries, Liv and Maddie. Descendants. I could go on. Yay, you found someone who likes to kiss you because you brushed your hair. But good luck waking up late and trying to be true to yourself when your straightener breaks.
5. Kindness. Every once in while we see this. It usually is at the heart of most programming. However, I rarely see true selfless, kind hearted, writing happen. That might be my own slanted bleeding heart speaking, but seriously. Most kindness seen in kid programming has some kind of agenda behind it.
6. Honesty? I don’t even know if I have ever seen a need for honesty in any kid program. I am sure it’s there, it may be part of the moral plot line, but do kids really understand that honesty was the best policy when the characters had so much fun lying to their parents, their teachers, their boyfriend, or their sister? Every single time, the lie is because they didn’t know how to say the truth or didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. How often do you see a character speak the truth when it was scary or when it was devastating or when someone really needed to hear it? Oh, I don’t know, when they got backed into a corner and needed to save themselves? Yeah. That’s the usual one. Again, thanks Phineas and Ferb.
7. The best person you already are. This is a really good idea and I know that some pieces try to approach it, but it is warped. Kids are told that they should be happy with who they are and are told to rock their weird unusual selves, however what they are presented with are creepy and plastic role models. The kid actors are usually older than the person they play. They have eyelash extensions, acrylic nails, they wear high heels, and have perfect hair. The boys are either extremely handsome but not intelligent or overly emotional and fat. The kids look fake and our kids see images that they can never be. They also learn that the only important thing in their life is to find the perfect relationship and they have to be the perfect person in order to do so. They are shadows that the kids can kind relate to but can’t quite live up to and it causes an empty, ugly, idea that they aren’t good enough and that they have to change who they are.
8. Working hard to be a good human. That seems like an easy one. We might see it, but it isn’t a strong theme. It’s rare, but I guess they try. Thanks Mulan. Too bad you thought the most important thing was falling in love after you saved the country and your family. Now don’t get me wrong, love is great. My life is forever beautiful because of my husband and family—but it isn’t quite the most important thing to push onto a 12 year old.
9. No one has power over you? Yeah right. Kids on these programs are in a constant battle to please, deceive, trick, or finagle some sort of enemy into getting what they want. Control or be controlled. Not to mention that most shows and movies involve upper middle class or rich kids in fairy tale situations fighting acne and lost pets. How are kids supposed to learn how to be strong individuals if they have no role models that represent the lives they live. Every once in a while you will see a family struggling or trying to make it—but it is because they have too many kids or a parent lost a job. But seriously, the houses are still fancy, the clothes are the highest fashion and sold at Kohl’s with the character’s face on the tag for several hours of parent labor.
10. Never let anyone decide who you will be. Girl Meets World works really hard on this one, except it’s clouded with all kinds of love drama, make-up, and stereo types. Conformity clouds the media for kids. Be like everyone else, fit in, and close your eyes and hope you make it until you are twenty.

So here I am, watching my adult kids with issues like nobody’s business. My twelve year old is afraid to wear her favorite clothes to school because the kids tell her that she looks like a baby. I took away cable hoping to protect them for many years. I brought it back a few times hoping they could decide for themselves what is good and bad and right and wrong. That is the idea right? But man has coming of age changed. I just hope these kids can survive the world that is shoved down their throat and can learn to fight even harder to become strong individuals who think for themselves, who can understand where others are coming from, who can make strong decisions based on the information they have gathered, and can learn to love the person they are and not the person they are told to be.