We are? OK, I guess that's something to think about. I kinda think it's part of a parents job to decide what young children see and hear. Hard core pornography, extreme violence, cultist propaganda of most kinds, and various forms of hate speech, all fall into the category of "things young children shouldn't have to figure out yet", for me. They'll see/hear it all when they get a little older, and that's OK, but we're talking about the Veggie Tales age group: 3-5 years old, or so.
Yeah, that is the thing I've been disagreeing about.
I don't think "stuff the parent thinks is good/bad" is a reasonable criterion for what a child gets to see or not. It should be the child's decision, with advice from his parent.
The fundamental issue is that if you can't persuade someone of your ideas, that is a bad reason to force him. If your child wants to see a religious video despite your advice, then he should see it. If it's full of dumb ideas it won't be very persuasive anyway, right? Certainly not more persuasive than the wise parent..?
Classic. I wish I could be there the day you try to persuade a 3 year old with your ideas. Have you met any young children, ever? You'll have a cantankerous and unhappy 80-pounder on your hands in no time, as they watch crap, consume crap, and learn crap from mainstream television and movies. I'm more laissez faire than most when it comes to kids, as I was raised in a very relaxed household and I think it works out very well in encouraging independent thought, but it's just stupid to imagine that a 3 year old can make wise decisions about their consumption. They simply don't have the knowledge to make reasonable choices, and you've never had the infinite "why?" conversation if you think they do.
What parents don't generally do is have an attitude of trying to get whatever their child likes. They do that "within reasonable limits". Reasonable being a matter of their own judgment. They have preconceived ideas about what shows are bad, and try to avoid their child finding out about them instead of refuting the bad ideas. They fear "bad influences", instead of thinking that the worse an idea is, the less persuasive it is.
One consequence of this attitude is that sometimes children want something, and their parents refuse, supposedly for the child's own good, and the child gets upset. Plenty of parents would, if their kid saw an episode of Veggie Tales (or whatever) and liked and repeated some ideas from it, say "omg the evil christians are polluting his mind" and forbid him from seeing the second episode that he's looking forward to. That's the wrong approach. Keeping people ignorant of ideas you think are bad is not the path to the truth.