Hey Teapot: SHUT UP ALREADY

NPR landed an email in my inbox today that I read with great interest, though little surprise.

If you know me, you know I have a great, big, honking soapbox about overscheduled children, the overcommercialization of children, Disney-fying everything from dalmations to candlesticks, and ruining young girls hope for happiness with the prince-on-a-white-horse syndrome.

There's too much shouting at children, and they can't hear themselves think nor talk to themselves. Too many toys clamoring for attention. Too many fantasies whirling about in TV land asking to be acted on. Add to that the fact that kids seldom get told "no" and therefore never learn how to say it for themselves or divide fact from fiction and you've got a ton of trouble. When was the last time you looked a kid in the eye, and said "Hey. Look at me when I'm talking to you."

Now, I read that I was right all along. Disney's Mickey Mouse Club, albeit a fun, happy thing, launched a landslide toward the mind control of children that has resulted in kids who don't know who they are. Because they don't talk to themselves, they can't hear themselves and they can't control themselves. They have no executive function.

NPR says it better than me, but what I've always believed is that there is nothing wrong with talking to yourself.

If you believe "To thine own self be true", you've got to know who that self is. And if you can't hear yourself think; indeed if you can't think for yourself at all, you'll never find truth in your life.

Get an old stick. Go play in the backyard before it's too late.

There's no such thing as a talking candlestick.