Jail's no place for kids....

Due to the fact that my baby daughter has got herself into a non-stop round-the-clock feeding routine I am often found sat in front of the telly these days.
Finn has helpfully buried the remote control somewhere out in the front garden in a mass grave which includes a monster truck, three plastic soldiers and a half consumed apple.
We haven’t yet purchased a combined metal/plastic/rotting food detector to locate these items so I am forced to watch whatever channel is on – because hauling myself off the sofa and across the room is simply too much like hard graft and the boy hasn’t yet mastered working the buttons to fulfil my channel switching bidding.
Something happens to a person’s mind when they are subjected to too much daytime TV. I can physically feel my brain cells exploding while viewing the morning entertainment shows. And as for the chat shows, it takes a lot of coffee and chocolate biscuits to chase away the dark clouds of despair after witnessing yet another poor young mother air her dirty laundry for the entertainment and amusement of a vulturous audience.
And not only am I subjecting myself to such drivel, the youngest boy is learning by the example set by Mr Daytime TV. If this continues he will begin to handle his toddler group disagreements by suggesting the other little folk ‘talk to the hand, coz the face ain’t listening’, chanting ‘DNA test, DNA test, DNA test’ loudly at random parents and informing little girls in the group that he ‘ain’t yo baby daddy’.
In a move to salvage what little working brain cells we have left I decided to tune into a few kid’s programmes instead. One, in particular, made me ponder what influence aforementioned Mr TV – someone I trusted with the education and supervision of my children – was having on my kids.
This programme was set in a prison, as in a joint where convicts hang out.
The Slammer, as it is called, is a fictitious prison for entertainers who have ‘committed crimes against show business’ ¬– like being totally rubbish or dropping a ball while juggling as opposed to grievous bodily harm, armed robbery or actual murder.
The prison has all the trappings of a real joint except the wings are adorned with beautifully coloured triangle flags and balloons. The inmates – instead of serving their time and facing a parole board – earn their freedom through the medium of dance and song in the Freedom Show performed in front of a crowd of invited school children.
The mind boggles.
The head honcho of the joint is a big, jolly governor who wears a spangled white suit and gold bow tie, you know like the real ones do. There’s even a long-term ‘resident’ of the prison although apparently he’s not doing a 10-year stretch for manslaughter he’s inside because he’s a very bad ventriloquist.
Now apart from feeling rather uncomfortable about a children’s programme being set in a prison – call me strange but I much prefer the old tea shop or nursery school setting – I object to the fact that the programme makers are glamorising the jail setting.
I often threaten my children with jail – ‘if you don’t tidy your room I’m going to call the cops and they’re going to haul your sorry ass off to jail’ and ‘you can get a three-year term for telling your father to shut up’ – and I don’t want them imaging this place full of colourful bunting, friendly, helpful staff, chips for dinner and daily variety shows for their entertainment. I want them to imagine cold windowless cells, grey-coloured slop for dinner and terrifying cell mates with names like ‘Skinner’ and ‘Buckets of Blood’
I want to instil in my kids a healthy fear of breaking the law and jail in general. Programmes like this, regardless of their comedy aspect, might give today’s kids a false representation of what incarceration is actually like – some of today’s youngsters might be sorely disappointed when they grow up to be criminals and find that jail isn’t half as much fun as it looked on the telly. Hell, some of these kids might fall into a life of crime just to get a chance to see Diversity or Aleshia Dixon in a prison concert.
Come back Mr Jeremy Kyle all is forgiven.