Every household seems peaceful when the mother works peacefully in the kitchen humming her favourite songs, the father busy working silently on his laptop, the grandparents enjoying enchanting their mantras rotating the 108 beads of the mala…and all this when the kids are happily watching their cartoon series one after the other on the cartoon channels. Pogo,Hungama, Cartoon Network, Disney channel and a few more. Every now and then a new channel pops up giving a number of cartoon series for the kids. Yes, the particular houses seem like peaceful, well organised sensible homes.

The irony is that the effect of these cartoon channels is not good on the kids most of the time. There is enough content on these channels to spoil the innocent minds. Why I am saying this is because recently I saw a friend of mine feeling extremely upset as her 5 and 7 yr old kids were behaving in a very bad way, which she discovered after some research that the effect of certain old CDs with Nobita’s dialogues and those of Oggy and the cockroaches had resulted in a bad attitude amongst the kids. They had started behaving in a manner of animosity towards each other, though the innocent minds didn’t understand what they were up to. She complained that certain dialogues had resulted in an embarrassment for her when the kids were playing in the living room in the presence of guests. The kids were abusing each other, pulling each other’s hair and talking in a threatening tone. She felt bad that she had enjoyed her peace so much that she didn’t pay attention to the content that she had subjected her kids to.

Yes, all this made me think. What kind of content our kids are watching? Abusive, filthy and irrelevant stuff…as they say negative things are absorbed first…our innocent kids are actually enjoying this. Cartoons are supposed to be entertainers, but they have turned into staining the minds of kids and us,too,to a great extent.

Some of the good cartoons like Chota Bheem come with morals. But the kids see them once and switch over to the ones that are not actually meant for them. Well, if cartoons are meant for the kids, why can’t they be sober? Some children have also started lying to the parents taking a ‘lesson’ from Nobita, some behave like Shin Chan, some expecting the world to be more of a technological world resulting in lazy attitudes. The kind of language used in cartoons is not meant for the kids, but they end up cramming those words and feel mighty using them very often.

We, as parents, want to lock channels which are not meant for the children, but then what about these cartoon channels which are doing more bad than good? Children even try to enact stunts that are given in these programs because they are not able to read and understand the disclaimers. Parents are too busy and happy to be in their own work with the children not around to create chaos around them. A thing of convenience for the adults is turning to be dangerous for the tender minds. Children even question the parents when scolded for their attitude. They even yell back saying they know all and have seen so on cartoon channels. It has become very difficult to explain the difference between right and wrong to the kids.

We need to decide what we want. Whether we want our kids to grow in a healthy environment or in a filthy one…? Kids need to be pushed outdoors to stay away from this dark atmosphere and parents need to give time to them, not surrender them to a world which will take away their innocence.