Ok, I admit it. We are a family addicted to game shows.

In the TV pantheon, shows pitting contestants against each other in contests requiring obscure skills rank just above reality shows involving manufactured romances and dubious talents. They are cheap to produce, require very little intellectual input and if you hit the jackpot, draw viewers in the multiple millions.( “American Idol” is probably the best example.)

When the intellectual age aimed at by these shows it is pretty low, it is not surprising that kids are so strongly attracted to them. We started off becoming regular viewers of “Wheel of Fortune“, a game show somewhat patterned around the popular kids game of “hangman”where you have to guess a word by working out the letters. The rationalization was that anything to do with alphabets and the English language could not be all bad.

Now we have moved on to a couple of shows that are possibly the other end of the spectrum from WOF - “American Gladiators” and “Wipeout”, both shows requiring physical strength and agility on the part of the contestants. It happened when we left the TV on a few times after WOF, alas, the kids were quick to pounce on the opportunity afforded by prime-time television.

After much soul-searching, the mom in me has decided to make the most of my children’s affection for these shows. Having trouble getting my daughter upstairs to bed? Why, the stairs have become the “Travelator “( a steep slope that contestants in “American Gladiators” have to climb up just before the finish). My 5 year old is thrilled that she can beat her mom everyday! Dawdling at bedtime routines? Just put a time challenge. “I broke my 2 minute record today, mom” she crows delightedly. My frequent trips to the gym have convinced her that I am secretly training to be a “gladiator”.

I wish.

With my surly pre-teen, the rewards are more subtle. Having hit puberty a little early, the 12 -year old has decided that he, Garbo-style, “vants to be left alone”. Evenings are punctuated by the slamming of his bedroom door, behind which( I hope) he reads and listens to music. “Gladiators” draws him out of his cocoon, as he condescends to sit with his embarrassing parents and converse knowledgeably on the vital statistics of the steroidal super-humans on the screen. While watching “Wipeout”, he very astutely remarked that it was less a show about seeing contestants pit their skills against various obstacles and more a comedy about people making fools of themselves. Sniff..my baby is growing up!

So we come together as a family, starting 7:30 p.m. every weekday, and spend an hour or two putting aside our differences in age, temperament, inclinations and intellectual ability to revel in the spectacle of other people’s ambitions. Dinner gets consumed in record time and I am now given some serious respect as a word-guru( thank you Pat and Vanna) . My daughter gets plenty of cuddles from both parents and I have ventured to give my son a hug or two while he is still within reaching distance.

Maybe we’ll get tired of dumbing ourselves down one day. “Jeopardy”, here we come.

Share This

“So ja beta, nahi to gabbar ayega”

Chances are, if you’re an Indian parent..you condemn your soul to moral perdition at least half a dozen times a day. We don’t believe in burdening our kids with the truth when a well chosen whopper can make them eat their dinner, brush their teeth, study for their tests and stay chaste till their 40’s. We invoke the police and the bad guys with equal zest, often for the same purpose. We shield our kids from bad news by telling them “Grandpa has gone for a long trip” or “Tommy(the dog) has found a new home.” We deflect questions about the birds and the bees by making up elaborate concoctions sure to keep them in therapy or couples counselling for years to come. Stories using organized religion as a backdrop maybe the biggest corkers of them all..no wonder they are called fables.

Our movies reflect our propensity to pretext. Movie moms deal with the loss of the movie dads by telling the child “He’ll be right back.” Exactly how dumb do they think the child is?

When I was growing up, my esteemed parent frustrated me on long road trips by answering the question “When will we get there?” with “In 5 minutes,” every single time I asked. It took me a while to figure it out, but eventually I realized that I would only get the answer she thought I wanted to hear. So when I had kids of my own, I figured I was going to be absolutely truthful to them. Both my kids have been exposed to the virtues of vitamins in their veggies and the perils of tartar in their teeth before they were two, leaving them with permanently bemused expressions.

Unfortunately, all my good intentions came to a hasty end at the hands of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, who conspired to make a liar out of me.  When it came to a choice between the magic of childhood and the clinical and unsatisfactory virtuousness of truth, it was no contest.

Still, I thought I was doing a fairly good job being straight with my kids on all the stuff that really mattered and instilling in them a love for truth that would help them grow up to be responsible, upstanding citizens when an incident happened that shook my belief in the virtue of verisimilitude.

My 5 year old had been  asked by her teacher to go to bed at 8 p.m. sharp prior to an important test day. As it happened she slept half an hour later. In the morning, she was in tears because she had disobeyed the teacher.( This is a rather sad commentary on the authority system at her private school, but that is a topic for later.) I tried explaining to her that-

-each child had her own sleep schedule and an arbitrary bedtime made no sense. ( more tears)

-she was to feel free to blame it all on me.( tearful objections -”but it was my responsibility”)

-the teacher was an idiot and she was not to listen to her( shocked tears)

I went around the block (literally and figuratively..the parking lot was full) with these arguments for a while before exasperation took over. “Just lie,” I said, ” and tell her you slept at 8 p.m., ok?”

The tears disappeared like magic.

“That’s what I wanted to do in the first place,” said the politician in training.

Share This