Saturdayness and suits
Posted 6 April 09 by Scott AndrewsKitty is three and we manage her telly watching very carefully. It’s CBeebies and DVDs that we choose, and nothing else.
But every now and then something slips through the net.
When winters began drawing in last year I had a sudden rush of Saturdayness one, um, Saturday, and felt an irresistible urge to see the old slitscreen tunnel title sequence for Doctor Who. Tom Baker’s stern mug floating down a shiny tunnel is just fundamental to Saturdayness, and I had to see it, just to get a hit.
Then Kitty wandered in, sat down and refused to let me turn it off. She hadn’t really got much of a clue what was happening, but the DVD I’d chosen at random was The Hand of Fear, which starts with a fabulous sequence of the Doctor and Sarah Jane being buried by an explosion in a quarry. It’s big and bold and she got that. She made me explain who everyone was and was very concerned that Sarah Jane was hurt, and happy when they took her to “hopsital” to get her made better. I let it run ‘til Sarah Jane woke up and was fine, and switched it off.
There we go, simple story – woman caught in rock fall, knocked out, taken to doctors, made better. She could understand that and she didn’t get beyond that point in to all the weirdness with alien possession, disembodied hands and so forth.
But I underestimated her persistence. Her regular requests to watch “Doctor Who and Sarah Jane in the hopsital”, wore me down. She was obsessed. I’m pretty sure it was because she knew there was stuff she didn’t understand and she wanted to watch it again and again ‘til she did. She’s like that – she worries at things ‘til she gets them. It’s one of the things I like most about her.
So a few weeks ago we were, as we sometimes do, watching this sequence again, and this time she insisted I let it run. So we sat and watched the first two episodes.
My reasoning was that she was setting the pace of her own development and that it was my job to allow her to do so, within limits. We sat and watched it together, I explained anything she asked me to, and I forward fasted through any bits I thought inappropriate. Eventually I stopped it after Sarah had been rescued from the reactor and things seemed to be over.
Kitty can’t have understood much of it, but she knew one thing – she wanted MORE. I gave it some thought and popped on ‘Revenge of the Slitheen’ the second Sarah Jane Adventures story. She watched it but was a bit bored by all the school stuff. She wanted the scary monsters. And when the Slitheen cropped up they were pretty damn scary for a three year old. But we watched together, she felt safe and I reassured her if she got nervous.
But she would not let me switch it off for anything. She was transfixed.
I was worried that perhaps she’d have a nightmare, but she didn’t. And neither did she display any signs of having being upset by it, or made scared of monsters in reality. I watched VERY closely for any signs of this.
So this Saturday I was killing five minutes by watching Primeval, ITV’s scientists vs dinosaurs Saturday Who rival. I was recording it for later, but wanted to watch a bit of it on broadcast, coz I’m impatient. It was by television’s James Moran, illicit squeeze of m’colleague Mr Guerrier, and it was essentially a haunted house story with monsters. Just my cup of tea. And, of course, in came Kitty and insisted on watching it with me and having it explained to her.
It’ a bit stronger than anything she’d seen before, but I figured a roaring dinosaur shot was within her capabilities so I sat with her and we watched it together.
Of course then Mr Moran unleashed the most bejesusingly scary monster the show’s ever done. At the end of the first act, before the ads, we zoom up a dark chimney and get a shot of a bat thing with big eyes and rows of razor teeth, snarling at the camera.
Kitty was really scared, and I thought I’d better switch it off, but her response was amazing to me – she made me rewind it so she could watch that shot again and again and again, each time watching it with wide eyes and mouth agape.
Come act two and there was lots of talking, and shots of Abby exploring the house. Kitty was incensed. “Where’s the scary monster? I want the scary monster!” She actually shook her little fists and quivered with frustration at one point. It was adorable.
Eventually we got some really scary stuff. The monster stalks Abby – we can see it but she can’t – and then it leaps out at her, scaring her so she falls down the stairs. Kitty put her hands to her mouth and cuddled into me – the first time I’ve seen her really scared by telly. And quite rightly, it was strong stuff for her. But she didn’t hide her eyes, she insisted on watching every second.
I judged that to be enough and switched it off, much to her chagrin.
She was still biting her fingernails, and miming her fright, but in a kind of knowing, play acting way. Nonetheless I made a point of explaining that monsters don’t exist in reality, just in stories, like the Gruffalo, and on telly.
Then I went on to explain about acting.
“When you see a person on telly and they’re being scared, they’re not really scared,” I said. “They’re pretending to be scared so they can tell a story.”
Pretend is a big thing for her right now. Her imagination has kicked in big time. She creates elaborate fantasy games for us and when I buy into them she often stops to explain that it’s just pretend, almost admonishing me for being so silly as to think otherwise. Because of this, I figured she’d grasp the concept of play acting and be able to relate it to what she sees on telly.
“It’s the same with people being hurt, or crying on telly,” I said. “They’re not really hurt or upset, they’re just pretending so they can tell you a story.”
She considered this, and then she furrowed her brow and blew my socks off by saying:
“Is it a suit?”
I didn’t understand at first, not realising the huge imaginative leap she’d just made. I said “sorry?”
“Is it a suit?” she repeated.
And then I realised that she’d taken my explanation of acting and pretend, and my assertion that scary monsters weren’t real, thought about this for a minute, and worked out that telly monsters are people in suits pretending to be monsters.
This is a bloody huge leap to make for a three year old whose primary telly experience is of The Wiggles in concert and Pingu. I was gobsmacked.
I could have explained that no, the bat thing was CGI, but in essence she was right, so I said yes, it was a suit and praised her for being so clever. She nodded, happy that she’d understood something new and content to file it away and move on to the next thing. All traces of her sort-of-pretend fright vanished.
After that, I was confident that there’d be no nightmares, no matter how scary the scenes she’d watched had been. And there weren’t.
It’s one of the best thing about being a parent – learning to trust your child to set the pace of their own development, and holding their hands, literally and metaphorically, as they push the boundaries of their understanding.
That Kitty is pushing so hard, so fast, with no prompting from us, is one of the things that makes me most proud of her.
Now I’m confident that she can sit with us and watch this Saturday’s Doctor Who special and that she’ll be fine with it, even if it is scary. In fact, she’ll insist on watching it.
And I’ll get my hit – because Saturdayness is multiplied by a factor of ten when shared with a child, even if that child does understand that monsters are just people in suits.
Comment
- We are also very strict about what our 4 yr-old watches, especially in terms of Doctor Who. It means I never get to see it ‘live’, as it were.
However, the only time he’s ever had a Doctor Who-related nightmare was after I took him to the DW exhibition at Earl’s Court. He absolutely loved the Cybermen, posed with them, raved about them, bought a cybermen toy…
Then, in the middle of the night, he woke up shouting, ‘The silver men are coming!’
My wife was not amused.
— Jon Green Apr 10, 7:13pm # - How brilliant. Children are always so much more perceptive than we give them credit for. Sadly, my experiences in trying to indoctrinate my daughter in the world of “Who” weren’t nearly so impressive. She must have been about 4 or 5 and I had the completely mad idea that I should start her at the very beginning and work through. She didn’t last the first episode, having been brought up on Captain Planet and other flashy adventure cartoons.
Over the years I did try to show her the classic Tom Baker’s etc, but she found the episodes slow moving and antiquated. Of course, that was until the new series. She’s 17 now and a huge fan of the new show, but will still never watch anything of the previous 8 Doctors.
— Kimota Apr 28, 7:41am #
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