http://tinyurl.com/6a7uf4

We have established restrictions, of sorts. You all got any rules?

My oldest asked me today "Why do Chinese people have slanty eyes and only two teeth?"

I thought she might have seen it on a much older show, like Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry or something, but she claims she saw this on Viva Pinata.

F*ck YTV and the horse it rode in on. Where do you even begin to correct racist sterotypes on popular kids shows? Why is this sh*t even on tv anymore?

Nope, no rules in the Familias house - we don't want to do anything that would EVER dampen their creative drive and their self-esteem.

That sounds an awful lot like the conversations at our dinner table. One day, Ro will grow out of this...I keep telling myself that.

Usually it's my family telling me to stop talking about movies and TV at dinner.

We mostly talk about theater at the dinner table. Ie- Which of Shakespeare's plays are the boys ready for? Or a debate on whether it ruins a musical to listen to a recording first.

Then we move on to movies and books, mostly high fantasy. And we have a no talking about TV rule. We are quite happy hypocrites.

On busy nights, we set up TV trays in front of Wheel of Fortune. We don't talk about TV per se, we participate ;)

We have rules that you cannot "quote TV" at the dinner table, unless you are using that quote to make an original report. And you cannot use character's catch phrases as your own. Doing so is an automatic one week ban from watching the show.

Michael, my family could have used that rule when my brothers were in middle and high school. I attribute my loathing for the Simpsons purely to being subjected to Simpsons quotes for approximately six years in a row, nonstop. Because I've actually seen a few episodes, and they can be amusing. But I still have an intense dislike for their quotes.

Actually, I just realized that's partly a lie. My dad and I say "Lisa, I would like to buy your rock" whenever someone is being non-reality based.

But other than that!

As a earned privilege, our eldest (1st grader) can sometimes watch my Invader Zim DVDs. He is teaching the 2 year old how to do the "evil laugh" Zim does from the end of the intro.