Mr. Rogers and family time

Our family bought a piano and so the first thing I tried to play after a long hiatus was from Mr. Rogers. It was a good idea, but you wouldn’t be able to tell what I was doing. I’m getting better, however.

In an interview from 1986, Mr. Fred Rogers spoke to Hour Magazineabout children, his work on the television show he referred to as “the Neighborhood,” and parents. He was asked several questions including his thoughts on quality time versus quantity time with children. I was amazed that in 1986, they were looking at this new phenomena called the ”two-parent working family” and talking about a book that would help children understand the concept of daycare when the time came. Crazy. Mr. Rogers gave his thoughts on family time by saying something to the effect that ten minutes a week, month, or year, does little for the child despite any quality time being used. As he was speaking, it’s like I was in front of the televesion again. The voice, the mannerisms were all the same, all there. He was captivating. As he was speaking, you could understand that his heart goes out to children, to their innocence, to the caring and nurturing of their mind and body. I loved watching this guy. It does well to know that the family unit - although so drastically distorted within the past 22 years - is still sacred. His personal decisions with his wife for their children were thoughtful and loving on both parts. His comments on affirming that children will always be taken care of, even when Mr. Rogers is gone, were so simple that it felt monumental. I want to be sure that simple truth isn’t memorialized, celebrated with the passing of a hero, but lived daily in my own life and those around me. I’m in full support of the beautiful neighborhood he loved to talk about.

Childhood Lessons in Song

While there are some strange nursery rhymes I learned as a child, if I had any analytical muscles in that little brain of mine, I was definitely taking in a lot of good lessons while learning to rhyme. Hush Little Baby, for instance, is very sweet, but also a very important lesson on the effective art of bribery that worked for me on my little sisters on numerous occasions. Humpty-Dumpty taught me that sometimes your breakfast goes to pot and there’s just nothing you can do about it. And while no one’s fond of spiders, that never held the Itsy-Bitsy Spider back when the rain came. He kept on going. You name one song you remember as a child and see if there aren’t any practical implications in that.

Both my grandmother and PBS have done an amazing job at teaching truth when I wasn’t looking through song and rhyme. It was a good way to learn and be creative at the same time (2 year olds don’t question why girls are named Miss Muffet, or why you could never see the whole upper body of Nanny from the Muppet Baby’s - but I knew that when my room looked kinda weird and I wished I wasn’t there…I could close my eyes and make believe and I could be anywhere). You know you missed out in childhood when you don’t have a song for the all-important social norms like cleaning up, sharing, and liking people for who they are on the inside. Those little rhymes when I hear them now make me feel like I was being educated and comforted at the same time. Here’s one in particular that I came across at PBS.org: It’s You I Like. I hope it makes you smile.