Child of our Time, tonight, BBC1, 9pm

[OldieMum]

For anyone who hasn't seen this before - it's a fascinating, long-term study of a group of children born around 2000 being done by a team working with Prof. Robert Winston. This is the latest instalment, focussing on how children first become aware of social distinctions like class and race and also looking at their first day at school.

Yes, she was worried about the water. I think you're right RTKM about the 18 rating - but didn't they give some scary statistic about how many kids have played it??

Misdee I think she was very overprotective. Which is understandable when she had lost two babies before Ethan was born. Agree though that he needs to live more of a normal life now his health problems seemed to have improved - he did live the life of an invalid I thought.

i know she had lost 2 or 3 bqabies b4 Ethan, but she was very over protective. saying that i wouldnt have let dd1 watch the episodes of eastenders and emmerdale that they showed and dd1 is a march 2000 baby.

Yes flashing nose

I liked hers too, my friends in canada have a life like that on a diary farm

All the family, well greatgrandparent, grandparents, 2 boys and girl and then all the children all live on same farm and there are 15 children there.

They are quite grown up now aged about 17 down to 6 years.

I don't really know about depression but her depression was a big thing in the last series and the basically claimed that with going back to work she was over it but it seemed to me that she wasn't.

Was slightly shocked at some of the stats they threw into the pot. 1 in 5 primary school children playing Grand Theft Auto (mentioned this to DH and the fact that it had prositutes in it and he reminded me that it is suffixed - Vice City at my naivity). Also how many young children are watching soaps and post-watershed TV.

Went to my SILs for tea on Christmas Day. Let DS stay up late for a treat but they had Coronation Street on (remember it was the one with Karen going loopy and lots of violence). Had to spend the whole time trying to distract DS from watching it. Was a bit that they invited us over (and general family pressure to go) and then had inappropriate (IMO and DHs) TV on.

kangamummy, what kind of diaries do they produce on their farm? week to a page? day to a page? filofax things or a variety?

black and white ones with added sound effects that go moooooooo

didnt watch this
will the diabetes thing make me blub?# I am a but of a wuss

I have to say I was quite chuffed at the programme pointing out the positive aspects of games consoles/pcs, but there is no way I'd let either of mine play Halo or GTA! DSs were shocked when we got them a game for christmas that said '7+' on it! I've said on other threads that I think my DSs have learnt a lot through playing games - social skills (sharing and turn taking)problem solving skills etc, plus DS1s excellent reading was definitely helped by playing rpg games with lots of text, that I got fed up reading for him!

Having seen that popcorn experiment though, I'm now itching to have a little chat with DS2 (june 2000) about whether he thinks the little people are really in the TV, but I'd be shocked if he does.

scream, I missed it last night!! Have followed this since it first started so am slightly miffed at myself for forgetting! I guess it was a good one from the posts?

lowcalCOD I blubbed at little Jamie and the diabetes - he was sooo lovely. I thought the way his dad was able to deal with the injections at the end was fantastic.

cod i wept & wept about the diabetes bit. but i have diabetes & am pregnant & am a complete wuss anyway. so maybe you'd be ok.

Hmm I could always fast forward thta bit
tell me the worst but then Iw ill be forewarned

I love this program. I thought that Jamies family were wonderful, what a lucky little boy to have such a great dad.

I thought that Ethans family were still very fragile after their tragedies, both the father and the mother seemed so sad, Ethan came over a quite a solomn child when at home but very different when he was at school.

I had to laugh at the family on the farm, I grew up on a farm myself and "driving" the car in the fields (on my mums knee) was one of my favourite games. How typical that the farmer (dad) got a bit shirty when the researcher suggested that the sheep pen might be a bit dangerous for a four year old. Statistics show that farms are actually very dangerous places to bring up children but farmers will only see that other peoples farms are dangerous as It was OK for them. Ask them though and they will be able to supply some horror stories about what happened to siblings/friends in the same situation. My worse accident was when I was three and my mum found me playing inside an empty fertillizer sack, I was in hospital for a fortnight with burns and poisoning. My brother had his wrist and collar bone broken by a sheep and my sister still has the facial scars from being attacked by a rooster when she was a toddler (she saw it "jumping" on one of its hens and tried to pull it off). So perhaps not so idyllic then?

I love this programme as Dd2 was born dec 99 so is the same age.

I felt abit sorry for Ethans mom, well the whole family actually. I know she has had/has depression but i felt that her illness was effecting Ethan in the way that she was too overprotective (especially the fishing bit) and I also felt sorry for the dad cos she seemed to be making out that she didn't trust him with Ethan.
Couldn't belive the games he was allowed to play.

I liked Jamies family and considering his mom also suffered from depression when he was a baby they seem like a very lovely, loving together family.

I liked the triplets family too, but do agree that they shouldn't be having dummys anymore, especially in the day. I wouldn't have had a prob with them falling asleep in their seats in front of tv if it hadn't been so late.

Thought the little girl on the farm was lovely too, the whole family infact, although i did think it was a bit dangerous, but then i don't like farms on the animals on them.

Thought the popcorn experiment was good am gonna try it with dd2 and see what she says.

yeah pamina, with you on the dummies, at 5yo in the day??
I too was so sad about the boy with diabetes.
Bozza, you're right about ethan's mum having PND.
Not sure I agree with her statement that "what 5yo boy doesn't play computer games like this...well, er, mine doesn't!
Bit taken aback by all the positives it showed, maybe I'm making a mistake reading him stories and taking him to the park, eh?

I was really shocked by the way Ethan's passion for extremely violent games was portrayed almost entirely positively - "look at how good he is at sharing/strategic thinking/making friends blah blah" - and suggesting they didn't affect him negatively at all. Was that the same Ethan who had to be literally pulled away from beating the live fish with a stick by his dad? Or the same Ethan who was pleading, 'let me hit his eyes!" about the same fish? Not normal behaviour in a four year old, IMO. I was really pretty appalled.

Have to echo just about everything! What was it with those baby seats for the triplets? Is it really not possible to put them in bed to fall asleep? And Ethan, I thought, had a really glazed look about his eyes - lack of sleep or personality disturbance? I agree, Aloha, there was something not quite "normal" about his behaviour - but then, is there any wonder considering how much time he spends blasting hell out of computer people?

My sil has always let her ds aged 9 play those violent games and I can tell you that the result is that he is desensitised to violence now. Doesn't even blink about it and has a really odd view on the world, very materialistic but that is more to do with sil and her dh ignoring him. When challenged her excuse was her dh bought them. My dh is disgusted. The whole video game thing is fine, again in moderation but by choosing games that were more age appropriate or fun without killing surely that would get the benefits without the violent aspect. I was really surprised they didn't focus more on what he was actually playing.

Anyway I am glad to see that I wasn't the only one who burst into tears over the Jamie/diabetes story. Seeing his sister crying when he "flopped" just set me off but it was lovely to see his dad overcome his phobia in the end.

Do you not think though that the triplet family are keeping them as the babies of the family in the way they treat them?

Glad to see I am not the only one who was shocked by the computer game thing! It seemed to me that they were definately saying it had had a positive effect on Ethan in many ways. I just can't get my head round that. Speechless really.
I better go out and but an x-box and some 18 rated games as it will make my children clever and popular!!

I have to say in defence of some of the criticisms of the programme that I work fairly closely to Robert Winston and I've heard that every series he fights to get the less 'controversial' elements of the programme into the final edit and for the scenes of mothers losing tempers etc. to be less prominent. But the programme is funded by a t.v. company and they want to gain viewing figures and rightly or wrongly they think that things which get people excited (negatively or positively) will up the viewing figures.

Personally, like a lot of things in the media at the moment I think this series would benefit from being much longer and going into specific issues in more depth. I think the funding bodies behind such shows underestimate the viewer's attention span and level of intelligence and opt for quick sound bites rather than in-depth case studies.

Gentle rant complete.

Yes, obviously they are going to show the juiciest bits for entertaining TV. But we sat there last night with my teens saying "he shouldn't be playing that game, it's a 15" and also the dummies!! Luckily computers didn't arrive till my kids were in their teens but I would be very uneasy with a child of mine having the games console in his room, let alone playing adult games.

I couldn't see what Ethan's mum was whining about.. it was a lovely day & she wanted to go outside with a book.... the little one was out with his dad so what was stopping her? She also dripped about having to bath them etc. How much physical effort does an 11 year old take? It's not as if she had 2 toddlers. Most odd.

Mummylonglegs - and it isn't entirely beyond possibility that the last thing a TV co will want to show is that exposure to Tv is not all good, either!
Bizarre to not commment on the effect of all that violence, fish-beating etc. Far more disturbing, to my mind, than triplets still using their old 'baby' routine to get to bed because their parents haven't quite found the energy to make a change - entirely understandable, and pretty harmless, but I bet they'll be really embarrassed now!