Media Monkeys - Kids say the funniest things

Once upon a time, in a faraway place, before I had children, in what seems many moons ago, I taught Media in a secondary school.   My A level groups did a research project called Children and Television, in which they researched the effects of television on young minds.  This often resulted in them making hugely spurious claims of the effects of television.  My role was to challenge them to see young children as more than porous empty vessels to be loaded with violent, sexist, consumerist, mixed up messages about the world. Now I have children, life feels like a daily media research project.  I still credit children with being incredibly media savvy, they can decode messages, and process them in line with what they already know about the world.  But I realise my four year old is going to need a lot of help with that ( 'Mummy stop, look at the terrovision, I want that!').  I realise how important media education and literacy is (I have listed some resources for young children below).  By that I don't mean teaching media is bad, it's not.  In fact much of it is hugely creative and exciting.  It also offers huge employment possibilities, who knows maybe my children will become ad designers or TV producers.  But learning to decode television's messages and make up your own mind, that's what I will be aiming for.  Especially after this exchange with four year old Miss L:

Miss L and gran are beating buttercream for fairy cakes.  Miss L loses her grip on the spoon and smears buttercream across her dress.

Miss L: Mummy is it tough?
Me: Yes, mixing buttercream is very tough.
Miss L: No I mean is it tough stains. I saw it on the telly. For tough stains you need something to put in the washing machine.
Me: ha ha, spluttering on my tea.

I had no idea she was picking up so much from adverts, she rarely even watches programming with ads.  So forget learning to count and write letters for now, we are going to start media education.  Here is an excellent list of five tips to create awareness of advertising and here is a fascinating snippet of research into three year old's brand awareness.  Would love to hear about other people's advertising/tv experiences.

Picture credit The Advertising Archive