What Really Makes Me Mad About...

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...reality TV, and Jon and Kate.

Peach and I were doing some grocery shopping over the weekend and when we arrived at the checkout she noticed "Kate" on the front of a tabloid. You know Kate. Peach said, "Mommy, she looks mad." I told her that I thought she was mad, but we weren't going to worry about it.

Peach hasn't noticed that we don't watch Jon and Kate any more, she remembers her only as the mommy on the show we watched.

A girlfriend told me about Jon and Kate a little over a year ago. She was caught up in the show, and thought I might like to watch. And so I did. I watched while I ironed -- DVRing the episodes and catching up when I could. The kids watched occasionally. They enjoyed watching the children's activities -- especially since every show seemed to be about a new amusement park or fun place to visit.

But there was just something about the show that made me edgy -- I actually found myself in a bad mood after watching. I had to stop, and so I did. I haven't regularly watched in probably six months or so (I did catch part of their recent premiere). Over the Christmas holidays, talking with some family members, we all agreed what the problem was. My uncle said he and my aunt can't tolerate the show because Kate is just so mean to Jon -- they can't bear to watch him get treated the way she treats him. Yes, I agreed. We all agreed. It's awful. It makes me anxious and I want her to stop (I can't imagine how the camera crew keeps their mouths shut.)

And so we don't watch anymore, but Peach hasn't noticed. She knows that Kate is the mommy of all the kids on the show, and so when she saw her face on the magazine she was curious. She asked me several times "Why is Kate mad?" And while I stood at the check-out, I got mad. I know it's my choice to control what my kids watch on TV, and maybe I should have "seen it coming," but the show seemed innocent enough. They are a Christian family, the kids are cute and usually sweet (except when they're screaming), and while you're watching you kind of forget that they are real. It's like watching the Brady Bunch. But now Jon and Kate are slamming each other in the media, and their kids are caught in between, and my child is watching. It's like letting your kids watch PeeWee's Playhouse and then finding out PeeWee was really perverted in his private life. In allowing my kids to become part of Jon and Kate's family, I allowed them to become part of the real life ugliness that happened as a result of Jon and Kate's hurtful decisions.

As a parent, I can't foresee the future. I want to keep my kids in a protective place where they are exposed only to the behaviors of which I approve. But I know from experience you can see bad behavior in Target on a Monday morning, or the grocery store on Saturday afternoon. It happens. We talk about it. The older children understand more about the Gosselin family because they can read. We talked about how we don't know the real story because we don't know Jon and Kate. We talked about not judging. And Peach and I talked about magazines that write about "not nice" things people say about each other. We talked about not listening to bad things that people say -- about "if you can't say something nice..."

I guess part of the solution is understanding that a married couple who would invite television cameras into their home for extended periods of time are maybe not who you think they are. There is just something too unreal about them to begin with. Can you be perfect all the time -- can you always be "on" to the person you want the world to think you are? No. I don't think anyone can. So the real person is going to leak out around the edges -- I like to call that "coming out sideways."

I hope that Jon and Kate can get in touch with their consciences before it's too late. What a shame that the children would lose their family because of fame and fortune. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time, nor the last. I just hope that next time I have made the right choice to keep my children from watching.

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