Parrotheader.com

Ok. Maybe the title's a little misleading. I've always been kid-friendly. It's a good thing too. Having kids is tough otherwise. But only recently have I really had to begin taking into account my own children when determining things like what TV shows it's safe to watch around them.

We honestly try not to watch too much TV around the kids at all. But you can't keep up with the pace of a child's play no matter how hard you try. We'll usually try to leave the TV off or just put on the radio or a satellite music channel and read/relax while she plays. But sometimes you do want to watch a little TV and there's nothing wrong with that.

In the past, Laney rarely cared about the TV at all. Sesame Street is the only show we let her watch regularly and she really enjoys it. But most of the time she prefers to play with us or her toys and will not pay attention to whatever we might watch in the background.

But that's starting to change of late. Even if she doesn't watch directly, she'll occasionally take a glimpse of what we're watching (and with her steel trap memory she remembers everything.) So we're having to fine tune some of our own viewing habits a bit. For Holly this undoubtedly requires bigger concessions as she loves shows like Sex & the City and all the various flavors of shows like CSI and Law & Order. Clearly those are not exactly the most kid-friendly shows.

But for me this has been an unexpected windfall as most of my favorite forms of programming are usually kid-friendly.

• Sports - I'm not a mega sports junkie, but I do enjoy watching a lot of football and basketball. I also enjoy watching the occasional game of tennis, golf, etc.
• Infotainment - I love shows like many of the programs you'll find on Discovery, History, TLC, Travel Channel, etc. The Discovery Channel is pretty much my default channel on my own time (although as Laney and I were watching Discovery's Planet Earth demo on HD at Best Buy the other day, I had to distract her as a herd of lions began to attack the "cute" elephant she had just been pointing out.)
  
• Sitcoms - There's a lot of sitcoms I wouldn't watch around a 2.5 year old, but there are certain shows that aren't too bad. Plus, Laney tends to completely ignore most shows of this genre.
  

So without firing a shot, I now rack up victory after victory in the remote control wars by playing the kid-friendly card.

Still, I do have to make a few modest concessions here and there. Recently I've been wanting to get another game for the Wii. I've narrowed down my choice to Mario Strikers or Mortal Kombat Annhilation. Hmmmmm. As much as I'd love to hear Laney yell out a blood-thirsty "FINISH HIM!" I'll probably have to opt for Mario.