The Eerie Effectiveness of Advertising

Yesterday, we made our first "tent" in the living room. For a few months now, Gabe has insisted, on a pretty much daily basis, on having the foot rest extended on the recliner. Usually, once it's extended, he has no interest in it, but once in awhile he'll play with his cars on it. Another staple of his living room environment is Poof. Poof is a twin sized feather comforter that we keep behind the couch because our living room--having drafty windows and being on the north side of the house--tends to get pretty chilly in the winter. Every day, Gabe stands on the couch, looking over the back edge of it, saying, "Poof! Poof!" until one of us pulls the comforter over and let him do what he wants with it. Usually, he wants to throw it on the floor, and all he will do with it the rest of the day is trip over it, but for some reason he still insists.

Yesterday, though, after an extended game of hide-and-seek (wherein I covered myself up with Poof and he backed up three or four steps then ran at me full tilt, fists extended, until he punched me either in the face or the junk--but, since he was laughing the entire time and having the time of his life, I HAD to keep doing it, despite the black eye and swollen bollocks I have this morning) I decided to try throwing Poof over the extended foot rest and creating a "tent."

After I threw the blanket over, it took about five minutes of coaxing before I could convince Gabe to crawl under and see the open space beneath the foot rest, but once I did, he was digging it. I brought in a handful of his cars and laid down on the side--while still under Poof--so I could watch what he was doing. It was adorable, and I should have taken a few pictures. Sadly, the camera was still in Libby's purse from use over the weekend.

Anyway, on to the point of this post. While we were under there, the TV was on in the background. We had it on Nick Jr (the Nickelodeon programming that runs from 7:30 am-?, where "?" represents the earliest point the network believes older kids will want to watch Spongebob again--or around 1:00 during the school year and anywhere from 10:00-12:00 during the summer) to watch Backyardigans. Then, out of nowhere, Gabe says, "Baby." I said, "What?" He repeated it. I listened to the TV and, sure enough, one of the many diaper commercials was running.

"Huh," I thought. Having never been one to pay much attention to what's going on in the foreground, I was pretty impressed that he not only heard it but recognized the voiceover/background noise in the commercial to remember what was in it.

Then about thirty seconds later he said, "Trash. Trash." Because his version of "trash" sounds like about a dozen other words he'll say atrandom intervals during the day, I had to look at the commercial for context and, sure enough, it was a Hefty commercial that, for one reason or another, he enjoys. Actually, I know why he recognizes that commerical. It has a five or six year old "big kid" taking the trash out for his mom, and I often point out to Gabe, "See how that big kid is helping his mom by taking out the trash? Some day YOU'LL get to help us that way!" I say this in the hopes that it will not only prepare him but get him excited at the prospects of doing menial chores for us some day. Because I fully intend to exploit that for whatever I can when he's old enough to do more good than harm. But the point is, he again recognized what was going on in the commercial based solely on the sounds coming from it.

All of this got me thinking and, perhaps, worrying just a touch. Of course, the first thing that came into my head was, "He's watching too much TV." And, no doubt, he is. Long ago we swore that we wouldn't use the TV as a babysitter. But then we had a kid who, without the TV to occasionally distract him, would need one of us in the room with him ALL THE TIME to coordinate his activities. Gabe is not a self-entertainer. So I try to maintain a happy medium. We watch SOME TV, which allows me to do other things around the house, but we mostly watch either PBS or Noggin, which don't show commercials and mostly show educational type programming. Only during the dead space in the morning, when neither PBS nor Noggin are showing something that I can tolerate, do we watch Nick Jr. So, he really only gets exposed to commercials for a rather limited period each morning.

So, I decided that, while I'm still somewhat to blame for his knowing commercials well enough to identify them without seeing them, it's MOSTLY the fault of the advertising agencies for making commercials that stick in my kid's head. Stupid advertisers! How dare you take advantage of my innate laziness and my child's spongelike brain! Shame on you for doing your jobs well! Why can't you be like most Americans and do a half-assed job, creating commercials that slip easily from his mind and, thus, letting me believe that I'm not doing some kind of irreparable harm to my son's development? How dare you make me question, um, things. Sorry. Hold on. Something funny just happened on the TV. Anyway, what was I saying? Hmm? Ha, ha! Monkey!