Fifteen years ago, I wrote a column for the Abilene Reporter-News – a newspaper for which I still worked remotely as online content editor even though my family and I had moved from Abilene, TX to Little Rock, AR. (My blogging buddy Deana Nall used to write a wonderful, somewhat-similar column for her hometown newspaper, The Baytown Sun.) I thought I’d re-post a few of my entries, as she has occasionally done with some of hers. My column was called “Parenting on Purpose.” This was the sixth installment.

_{(originally published September 20, 2002)}

Most of us parents, I think, do our best to protect our kids from the threats we can see coming. We have them fingerprinted at a table set up by the police department or a parents’ group in front of Wal-Mart. We attach a school picture to it, maybe even a lock of hair for a DNA sample — if we’re willing to envision a worst-case scenario.

We restrict them to the part of the neighborhood visible from our doors … buy them helmets and shin-guards and elbow-pads … try to get them to eat nutritious meals … make sure they brush their teeth.

Maybe even install protective software on our home computers and program v-chips on our TV sets.

I’ve even seen little black boxes for sale that filter out a fair percentage of objectionable language from the television.

But recently I’ve become concerned about some threats I haven’t seen coming; threats broadcast to my kids’ minds and hearts, so subtle that no little black box can filter them out:

Greed. I know commercials are there to sell stuff. (I used to write them.) I’m glad that advertising gives us free television programming. I don’t think my kids need — or truly even want — most of what they think they want. So I’ve started countering with “Well, if you’re still talking about it by Christmas (or your birthday), I’ll know you really, really want it.” It scares me when I hear myself repeating my mom, but sometimes I can’t do better.

And I still see too many characters in kids’ TV programs who live for nothing but accumulation, for better or worse.

A preoccupation with things that are just plain gross. I’m not talking about Gak or Slime coating the willing participants of kids’ game shows. I mean the almost-constant references on the new cartoons to rotted food and excretions that only ear, nose and throat specialists should have to deal with. I guess it’s harmless now … but where will programming go when those references seem tame?

Gender prejudice, and a disturbing portrayal of virtually all adults as completely incompetent. Adult television, in many ways, has become so self-conscious about not offending minorities of any description that it suffers from “Stupid White Male Syndrome” — the only people portrayed as dumb are white men. Kids’ TV shows, and especially those Saturday morning “teen” shows, seem to get around that conceit by pitting one gender against the other in a never-ending smarter-stronger-cooler-better competition. In these shows, all grown-ups are idiots. Which leads me naturally to ….

Smarmy attitudes; smart-mouth insults and put-downs. This staple of “grownup” TV humor is now the rule for kids’ TV, too … as well as young characters with that attitude that once only Eddie Haskell had and nobody admired. They act as if they respect adults, but only when adults are around. The insults, though, are not restricted to adults, and they are as biting and acerbic as anything H.L. Mencken could have generated.

And have you noticed that the items hawked by the commercials on these shows are too young for teens?

I really see only one defense against the onslaught. I have to sit down with my kids when they watch. Occasionally, I have to let them know where I sit on an issue: “Gross!” “That comment was unnecessary.” “Is that really the way people ought to talk to each other?”

Sometimes my kids respond, “Dad! It’s just a TV show.”

That’s fine.

As long as they know that.

When we’re not sure, there’s always the “off” button.

_{Keith Brenton is the father of Matthew, 9, and Laura, 6. He and his wife, Angi, are adoptive parents. As content/media editor, he helps maintain Reporter-News Online and works at home. You can reach him by e-mail at [no longer active], but he admits he doesn’t have all the answers.}

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a column for the Abilene Reporter-News – a newspaper for which I still worked remotely as online content editor even though my family and I had moved from Abilene, TX to Little Rock, AR. (My blogging buddy Deana Nall used to write a wonderful, somewhat-similar column for her hometown newspaper, The Baytown Sun.) I thought I’d re-post a few of my entries, as she has occasionally done with some of hers. My column was called “Parenting on Purpose.” This was the fifth installment.

_{(originally published August 16, 2002)}

Maybe it was because we’ve been reading “Little House on the Prairie” with Matthew.

Maybe it was because we’ve been reading “Bearenstain Bears: Too Much Stuff” with Laura.

Maybe it was because we had gone to one of those prairie settlement recreations with the kids the Saturday before and saw how little the pioneers got by with.

Maybe it was just because Angi has been vowing to do this for months.

Whatever the reason, we spent most of our Labor Day un-stuffing the kids’ rooms. We laid out the big black lawn-waste bags in the hall. Matthew made signs for them reading “Toys Only” and “Trash Only.” And we dived in head-first, because that was really the only way to get into their rooms.

It’s incredible how much stuff accumulates there, because our kids not only want every toy they see on television, but also to keep it forever, plus the box or blister it came in. When the accumulation gets past a certain point of diminishing returns, it’s too intimidating for a grade-schooler to tackle alone.

We knew that The Great Un-Stuffing would take coaching, so we split up: Angi with Matthew and Laura with me. I mention them in that order because little Laura is better about divesting her stuff than I am. Only once did she ask if we could keep something: her doll stroller, and in the garage.

“There’s no room in the garage,” I said. “You know that.”

She just looked at me. She knows whose stuff fills the garage to overflowing: mine.

While I worked at organizing and weeding out trash, Laura filled one of those lawn-waste bags with her working (but outgrown) cast-offs in pretty short order. No tears, no wailing. We didn’t hear any from next door, either, where Mom and Brother were working.

In fact, he filled two of those bags with his toys and one with trash.

We labored nearly all of Labor Day.

In the end, they had vacuum-able, navigable floors … desk space they could actually use for writing and drawing … accessible toys and clothes.

— As well as a lot of pride in what they had accomplished.

Mom and I were proud of them, too. Though we were tempted, we didn’t offer any kind of reward — edible treat, swimming or museump trip, or (heaven forbid) new toy — for their work. Our instincts were on-target this time: having the clean room was its own reward for them.

I wish I could have taken the kids with me when dropping off their stuff at the Goodwill collection center. But they’ve been there before, and have seen the smiles and heard the thanks given back by the folks there.

We used to put our unwanted stuff in a garage sale. We’ve done pretty well at that, too. I don’t think we’ve ever made less than $400. One of those garage sales in a toasty garage on a blistering August afternoon in Abilene made us swear them off for good. We always ended up donating the unsold stuff anyway, so now we just skip the part about having the garage sale first.

I think the best reward for me was overhearing the kids react to a commercial the morning after The Great Un-Stuffing.

“I want that,” Laura giggled. “Matthew, do you want that?”

He thought. “Not really,” he said. “I can do without it.”

“Yeah,” she replied.

Excuse me, please.

I’ve got to go un-stuff the garage.

_{Keith Brenton is the father of Matthew, 9, and Laura, 6. He and his wife, Angi, are adoptive parents. As content/media editor, he helps maintain Reporter-News Online and works at home. You can reach him by e-mail at [no longer active], but he admits he doesn’t have all the answers.}

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a column for the Abilene Reporter-News – a newspaper for which I still worked remotely as online content editor even though my family and I had moved from Abilene, TX to Little Rock, AR. (My blogging buddy Deana Nall used to write a wonderful, somewhat-similar column for her hometown newspaper, The Baytown Sun.) I thought I’d re-post a few of my entries, as she has occasionally done with some of hers. My column was called “Parenting on Purpose.” This was the fourth installment.

_{(originally published September 6, 2002)}

Dear Readers,

I know it shouldn’t be the parenting columnist asking for advice in the column, but I can’t help it.

I’m completely distraught. My children have no heroes. At least, none that they’re willing to tell me about.

I asked Laura, 6, who her heroes were — hoping, expecting to hear “The Little Mermaid” or even “Barbie,” but she just shrugged, “I dunno.”

I asked Matthew, 9, and his eyes just twinkled; a smile quivered at the corner of his mouth and he said, “Ed from ‘Ed, Edd and Eddy’ ” — a carton on Nickelodeon that he knows I don’t particularly like because all of the characters are doofuses.

When I was a kid, I had heroes. I made do with “Batman” until “The Green Hornet” came along — he was much cooler — and I discovered “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” in its last season. Napoleon Solo was okay, but Ilya Kuryakin had the patent on cool. The guy with pointed ears on “Star Trek” could neck-pinch them all to oblivion, though.

I still have heroes, though my definitions of “cool” and “hero” have changed over the years. (Matured, I like to think.)

Now I have heroes like Richard and Linda, folks with ordinary jobs who pretty much put their two kids throug hcollege at ACU, and — at the same time — a student from Africa who had lived with them throughout his high school years.

I have heroes like Bob and Kathy, who — with their natural children pretty much grown — are foster parents for babies in transition for adoption. They fell in love with two special needs children and adopted them, rearing them to ages 9 and 14 now, I think.

I have heroes like Robert and Michelle, whose son Riley suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at two weeks of age. Now 3, he’s learning at Easter Seals to communicate the only way he can — with American Sign Language. Did I mention he has two older sisters and a younger brother?

I have heroes like Angela, a single parent who for years desperately waited for a kidney transplant while rearing her three kids — now teenagers — from her wheelchair. She couldn’t even make herself pray for a transplant, because she was afraid the price would be some other children’s parent. Her friends prayed for her. But the transplant never happened, and she passed from this life last spring.

So I have some ordinary heroes, too: people who check that little box on their drivers’ licences to donate their organs.

You can understand why I’m distraught, can’t you. I’ve always had heroes. I thought every kid had heroes, needed heroes — those brave, super-powered unconquerables whose secret identities you would never, ever share. Not with your friends, not even with your best friends, especially not with your … parents.

Oh. Yeah.

That’s right. If you leaked their secret identities, they’d lose their super powers … their abilities to do mighty deeds … because they’d never have time off from being heroes. Come to think of it, my kids know all of the heroes I’ve described.

Never mind, dear readers.

Forget I asked.

_{Keith Brenton is the father of Matthew, 9, and Laura, 6. He and his wife, Angi, are adoptive parents. As content/media editor, he helps maintain Reporter-News Online and works at home. You can reach him by e-mail at [no longer active], but he admits he doesn’t have all the answers.}