life lessons from winnie the pooh

jared and i have been very careful to not commercialize alena's childhood. a lot of people we know seem to bury their kids in dora and elmo and whatever else. we're not against alena liking this stuff. while we'd prefer she find entertainment from her imagination and the world around her rather than a tv show, we really wanted her to find this stuff on her own.

we had watched a bit of sesame street and blues clues and whatever is on PBS kids. all of it, she could take or leave, didn't seem overly interested in it. until we saw winnie the pooh. before this, she seemed to like bears. my sister in law gave us a pooh VHS. we watched it. it was over. alena is smitten with"pooh bear". she asks for it. she can name all the characters. we can use it to bribe her.

i've noticed that modern children's programs are different than the stuff i grew up with. it's faster, more stimulating, more complex story lines. in a word, annoying. i like pooh because it's not much different than the pooh of my own childhood.

what i really like, though, is the relationships between these imaginary friends of christopher robin. none of them are perfect, they all have their quirks. they all get under each other's skin. but they're still friends. they kind of roll with the punches. they have learned to accept the idiosyncrasies of each other. they can call one another out on something and it's not major drama. there's no beating around the bush, no gossiping behind another's back, no sugar-coating of something. if someone has upset another, they say it outright. and the other either says "you've misunderstood" or "i'm sorry." and go on with life. it's not a show where everything's a fake happy all the time. there's no revenge or petty drama. no one is worried about self-esteem or working to fit in. they know that these other residents of the hundred acre wood is their family. it's real and imperfect and graciously forgiving of others.

those are values i can be comfortable raising my daughter with.

**by the way, i didn't grow up watching the cartoon of pooh. i grew up with the disney channel. did anyone else grow up watching this version?