Instructions in Reality

Adam is definitely too young to have watched Scooby Doo. But the damage is done now and we haven't decided whether or not he can watch Scooby Doo again. Here is how he started watching Scooby Doo. We bought some Scooby Doo movies for the three older children for long car rides. At the time Adam did not watch TV at all. But apparently seeing and listening to Scooby Doo in the car speeded that along. I, of course felt relieved when Adam at 2 years and 8 months decided to sit still long enough to watch a movie. He had not watched more than 10 minutes at a time before then, and I was already quite pregnant and in need of naps. Until Adam would watch TV he would not let me take a nap unless he was taking a nap too. Well at first Adam would only watch Bob the Builder. All of the older kids hated Bob the builder so that wasn't great but it gave me a half hour a day. Then after our September temple trip (a long drive with all of our kids) Adam began watching Scooby Doo and only Scooby Doo. He would no longer watch Bob the Builder. That was fine because now the older kids were willing to watch what Adam would watch and I could get a two hour nap. Life was good. I thought that Adam was a little young for the contents in Scooby Doo, but being very pregnant I convinced myself that Adam would be fine and didn't worry about later consequences. Well we started facing the later consequences after Christmas. Adam began waking up at night screaming and crying from nightmares. We thought it was probably due to too much Scooby Doo and cut down his TV time. But at that point we had a brand new baby and I was lucky if I got 4 hours of sleep total. I think two to three hours of sleep was more typical right after the baby was born. So Adam pretty much right away watched too much Scooby Doo and after about a month he seemed to be able to deal with the nightmares on his own. Once the baby was sleeping through the night I mostly quit taking naps and Adam has not watched nearly so much TV and much less Scooby Doo. But now we have found another consequence to letting Adam watch Scooby Doo too young. Adam believes monsters are real. The other night when I was tucking Adam into bed, I found him lying on the very edge of the bed. I moved him over and said, "You shouldn't sleep so close to the edge of your bed because you may fall out and hit your head and that would hurt." To my surprise Adam pointed to the wall side of his bed and said, "I can't there is a monster right there." Well, I felt VERY concerned but instead I laughed and said, "Oh, Adam monsters aren't real. There is not a monster on your bed and you will be safe." Adam said, "But monsters are real on my Scooby Doo." I told him that monsters were not real here so it was okay. Adam seemed comforted so I left and he went to sleep. This morning Adam came to me and said, "I can't go downstairs there is a monster downstairs with Kate." (Kate was sick and sleeping down stairs). I remembered our conversation the other night so instead of assigning Adam the chore of monster extermination I told him that monsters are not real. Again Adam informed me that monsters are real on his Scooby Doo. I told Adam that Scooby Doo was not real. I told him that cartoons are all pretend, and all imaginary. Adam seemed rather disappointed, and then he said, "Scooby Doo is a dog. Dogs are real. Scooby Doo is real." I said, "Dogs are real but Scooby Doo is not a real dog. He is a cartoon dog and cartoons are all pretend." Ruth them responded, "That is right Adam. Scooby Doo talks and nobody taught him how to talk. In real life you have to teach dogs to talk if you want them to talk."