Red Toothbrush

@SeattleDad - Asked my 2yo what he wanted for Christmas. "A red toothbrush!" Wow, I hope I can still get one this late in the game.

I posted the above Tweet on my Twitter account yesterday. It was quickly retweeted (passed on) by a few other Twitter users. I'm not sure if it was because of my added humor at the end, or because people found it endearing that a 2 year old's request for Christmas was a simple red toothbrush, but the statement seemed to resonate with at least a few parents on that social networking site.

If you have been following me here or on Twitter for any length of time, you probably know that we are a family without television. We cancelled it before Lukas was born. It was a difficult decision, but then again it wasn't. We had waited a very long time for a child to enter our lives and we collectively decided that we wanted to give him as much undivided attention as we could.

I had serious doubts that we would be long without our television. After all, we had spent quite a bit of time watching our favorite shows before making the decision. However, it is nearly 3 years later and I don't see us turning it on anytime soon. It has been extremely rewarding to spend Saturday mornings reading my son books and having him help me make breakfast rather than ignore me as he watches his favorite cartoons. It's not that there are not a lot of quality shows out there for kids, it's just us wanting to spend that extra time interacting with him.

One of the results of this is that, other than Elmo, he has little concept of the characters which adorn kids television shows. Yesterday, he received an invitation on a Dora card, and had no concept of who she was. Neither does he know of Thomas the Train, 'Cars' characters, or Sponge Bob. Don't get me wrong, he has lots of toys. Enough so, that he doesn't want for anything to captivate his attention without having television in his life.

So, when asked what he wanted for Christmas his answer was the toothbrush, since it is his favorite color and the dentist mistakenly inserted a PINK one in his go home bag. This needed rectified.

I hope that no one reading this interprets it as me passing judgment on their parenting. I am absolutely not. I know that everyone has their own parenting style and legitimate reasons for making the decision they have about the amount of television they allow their kids to watch. Our time will come to turn it back on. This is just not it.

For the record, Lukas is an extremely happy, outgoing boy, with terrific social skills. We spend a large amount of our time together laughing and being goofy. I know this will not last forever, so I am going to enjoy it as much as I can while he still thinks the world of me rather than considers me lame and corny, which I know will come.

Now excuse me while I run out on a desperate search for the last red toddler sized toothbrush in Seattle. Wish me luck.