Discernment

So Jonah is a tv/video fiend. If left to his own devices, his perfect summer day would be watching tv and doing sommersaults and flips off the couch all day. For some reason, the two go hand in hand for him. We don't have cable which helps, but we do have DVD's and my mum records the kids, favorite disney channel shows and sends them to us, which we really appreciate. So, I try to keep a handle on how much they watch. I usually just save tv time for the afternoon when it's super hot and they can't be outside.
Jonah's two favorite things to watch are Trav's old summer camp videos and Phineas and Ferb, a disney channel cartoon. Both are risky television for Jonah b/c he lacks discernment.
All of Trav's camp videos are crazy, him doing dangerous, weird things and worst of all the cabin raids! I'm so afraid I'm going to walk into my kitchen and see Jonah walking around with his foot in a bag of chips making a mess, or licking cookies and sticking them back in the bag, or doing terrible, terrible things to my toothbrush... Those of you who have been to camp feel me on this! Jonah mimics everything he sees. We were at his soccer practice last week, and I was doing my thing meeting parents, making conversation, stepping outside my comfort zone etc. When Jonah walks up and declares in front of a couple parents that his tongue is getting sunburned and he needs some sunblock. I immediately knew he was referring to when Trav squeezed a bunch of sunblock in his mouth for a burned tongue one year at camp. I was thinking, "oh, please don't Jonah, don't take this any further, I don't want to have to explain to these nice people what the heck you are doing and why, we are trying to look normal!" Thankfully, we all just chuckled at Jonah and he wandered away.

Phineas and Ferb. What can I say. It's a hilarious cartoon with very sharp humor and Dr. Duffenschmirch (sp?) says silly things with a very thick accent. But he also says things like "jerk, loser, and idiot" which I didn't ever notice before, until Jonah started calling us these names... I couldn't figure out where he was hearing it, until finally he shared a few lines from the show where he'd gotten it. So we had a big conversation on what's appropriate and what's not, he had tv restriction, and Phineas and Ferb went on hiatus for awhile.

The problem is discernment. He doesn't have any yet, or hardly any. He doesn't know that what Trav and the guys are doing on camp news is totally not appropriate in real life. We laugh at Trav on these videos, why shouldn't he repeat them and get a laugh too? Trav joked that he was going to keep all his camp videos hidden and do a big reveal when Jonah was 18. Jonah also never said idiot, jerk, or loser before watching Phineas and Ferb either. I think he knew they weren't very nice, but he didn't know how bad they were. We laugh and think the cartoons are funny, so why shouldn't he repeat it?
I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I don't think I'm totally going to say Jonah can never watch any camp news or Phineas and Ferb cartoons ever. I don't like extremes. I want him to learn discernment, to be able to see or hear something and make a decision on whether it's ok or not. But I'm at least definitely going to limit them now, I think our summer afternoon tv watching got a little much, and Jonah got too steeped in the content. Moderation right? I'm always learning.