*raising his fist in the air and singing* We Shall over-populate!

My kids enjoy the Harry Potter films.  I shall spare you my personal religious beliefs but so far, they have not left the church to go be Wizards.  But if they did, I would rather them do that than the following activities:

1. Drugs

2. Underage Drinking

3. Indiscriminate Sexual Promiscuity

4. Having no imagination

5. Having a closed mind

6. Thinking that their view of the world is the only possible.

I read the Narnia books by CS Lewis.  I watch Star Wars, Wizard of Oz, the Evil Dead Trilogy, I listen to David Baerwald, Rush, Hank Williams and sometimes I even go really nuts and watch C-Span.  My folks raised me to do a regular "Horseshit" check on all of the input that crosses my senses.  I'm teaching my kids the same thing.  Ok...Rowling writes a story about a boy who can do amazing magical things.  Yeah it's cool but...it's fiction.  Or as we say in Kansas, "Horseshit."  The president tells me we're in eminent danger of being nuked by Iraq.  Horseshit.  A girl told my Daughter that her father is a trillionaire and the only reason he doesn't live with her is because he's too rich to live in our neighborhood.  "Horseshit!" (he left his wife for an internet sweetie in St. Louis.)  I remember dad repeating this to me at home and in his classes..."Learn, Investigate and THEN believe."

I'm sure there are kids that are pathological in their love for a certain thing and that's a problem.  But it's not the problem of the input.  It's a problem with the child's ability to discern fact from fiction.  If they believe the word of a book or a movie or a musician over their parents or their own, they've got some serious difficulties ahead of them.

PRH