So, I guess people can get a life, lol, and that would turn the TV off.

We rent shows from Netflix. We started watching the first season of Heroes a couple of months ago. It is a little mature for my nine-year-old, but really that’s the only exposure she has to anything like that, and she’s already demonstrated a very mature sense of self (being a black belt and state champ in extreme martial arts and the “little miss” of our township), so I’m not terribly worried about it.

I am a feminist, so I’m very careful about how we guide our kids (the boy and the two girls). I don’t restrict things like Barbie dolls, but we counter those images with feminist ideas like the Gail Carson Levine books and the real life women she’s with day in and day out, so I believe she has a good balance. We don’t use words or phrases that are degrading to women, either, like slut or bitch. (I also won’t tolerate words like, “gay” or “retarded” to be used as derogatory terms in my presence, either). My children know where the phrase, “rule of thumb” came from and that they can’t use that in my presence because of its history.

I believe that raising people who respect themselves and respect sex is something that starts when they’re children. It begins with self-respect and moves onto respecting other people and the intimate relationship. So, what am I doing? Everything, and I started it back when they were born. I don’t see us having time for evening television for the next ten years or so, either. As television shows run their course, we can look into them and get them from Netflix to watch on our own time.

That said, even the G programs ooze sex. I had on “Everyday Italian” one day and my 9-year-old said “Mom, why does everything Giada DeLaurentiis wear show her breasts?”

It’s an ongoing, never ending dialogue with our kids. I think it’s about helping foster their self-esteem so they don’t feel like they only way they’ll get someone to like them is through sex or by wearing provocative clothes.