TV IS FUCKING CRUCIAL

If you’re a dad and you see the title of this post you’ll be like “yeah, yeah, tell me something I don’t know – if it wasn’t for the television, my wife and I would already be dead.”

Not so fast – that’s not what I’m talking about. I MEAN IT’S CRUCIAL FOR THE FUCKING KID. Let me explain:

My wife is a fucking European hippie, so she couldn’t stop complaining about how much television I let our first daughter watch. My wife pretended that she was concerned about some imaginary study which proved that TV caused autism and gave kids ADD.

In real life though, I’m positive that my wife’s resistance to television was because my wife was a Chomsky-ite America-bashing Vegetarian Euro-Liberal whose worst fear was that her daughters would turn into Disney-worshipping American-Girl Barbie-craving robots. (Which is exactly what happened in the end – HA! Awesome Bruce-Lee style punishment for her uppity leftist crimes.)

Now:

In the end, because there was FUCK ALL to do at our house, the first kid DID end up watching a lot of TV and getting to play with incredible websites like Sesame Street.com. As a result, she had a fucking blast, developed a kick-ass sense of humor / hunger for cool entertainment, AND learned the fucking alphabet faster than any kid before the year 2000 could have possibly done it. She was a 3 year old prodigy who could use a mouse and knew what google was.

It was a triumph: the kid was walking around like a little happy genius because of all the media she was exposed to, and meanwhile my wife, in total denial, went around talking about how our daughter had learned the alphabet and all that shit because of the fact that we read books to her and somehow she got it by osmosis or some shit – instead of because Elmo PAINSTAKINGLY showed her EACH fucking letter for TEN THOUSAND hours with more patience than ANY human has.

My wife would not admit how much Elmo and I ruled – On the contrary, my wife maintained that it was because of how much she had LIMITED our daughter’s television and internet exposure that the kid was so sharp.

I let my wife believe what she wanted to – I had been married long enough to be MUCH more comfortable with peaceful injustice than with engaging the futile idiocy of trying to prove a point to an illogical woman who would die before conceding defeat. The kid was a genius, and happy, and that was all that mattered TO ME.  

Fast forward 4 years to the present day, and my youngest daughter is now 3. She wasn’t allowed to watch any TV because my wife cracked down and made sure that she “played with her older sister” instead of spending time on the computer or watching television.

Surprise: She’s already 3, and she doesn’t know the alphabet or her numbers. She knows the alphabet SONG – any retard knows that – but she can’t identify the letters. So now I’m stuck with fucking flashcards trying to teach her letters before she starts pre-school in the fall and we get reported to child welfare.

I sit there with THREE fucking letters on 3 notecards: A, B, and C.

I show her the card with ‘A’ and she says “Three!” 

-I say “THREE is not a letter – that’s an A’

-”Oh! hahaha A! A! A!” she says

I show her a “B”

-”What’s that?” she asks

-”That’s a B!” I say

-”Oh! hahaha B!” she says

-”GOOD!” I say. Then I show her the “A” again. “What’s that.”

-”ummmm, what’s that?” she asks

-”That’s an A!” I say.

-”Oh! hahahaha! A” she says.

This time I don’t move the card. I just keep showing her the A. 

-”What’s that?” I ask.

-”ummmmmmmmmmmmm” she says

-”come on,” I say, “I just said it – you know it!” I start to get a little nervous that she’s retarded, so I start to mouth the letter “A” to her just to let her cheat so I don’t have a panic attack. “What is it? It’s an …aaaaeee?”

-”Three!” she says.

She’s RETARDED.

She’s retarded because my wife wouldn’t let this one watch TV. My wife thought she was a badass and that Europe rules, so now our kid is literally slow; a slow child left behind, and it’s not funny.

Children’s television and internet make your kid smart as an asian. But my wife stood strong – she has HER principles, and in the end, that’s what she cares about – her principles and what she thinks is right, rather than the intelligence and long-term happiness of our child.

She wins!!