I think it’s funny that some parents won’t let their children watch Spongebob.
Lets return to a time, however, where I didn’t quite “get” Spongebob. When my daughter, Bookworm, was a wee tyke, she would watch it with Dad and I would hear them both continuously laugh. At that time, I would walk by, stare at the TV for about a minute and walk off saying “I don’t get this show.
Flash forward to when Bookworm was 14 and my Little Man (who’s now 5 1/2) was 3 and old enough, by Dad’s authority that is, to watch Spongebob, I ended up watching it again as well… second time around, ya know, and… I GOT it!
I GOT the twisted reality of fire under water.
I GOT the humor!
I GOT the simple innocence of Spongebob.
I GOT how ridiculously and stupidly FUNNY the show really is.
My son picked up on much of the vocabulary in the show at a very young age and knows what larger words mean and how to properly use them. I don’t know how many other 4 year-olds know the phrase “Depth Perception,” and can explain it to an adult, but mine does. Spongebob is also incredibly polite and my son has picked up on that as well as Mr. Crabs being unbelievably greedy and Squidward is a prude. (Prude is my word… not Little Man’s.)
Today he said to me after watching an episode of “Turbo” (the racing snail series)
“Well, it’s your funeral.” REALLY??? Spongebob would never say that… maybe… but I did have to go into what that phrase means and for him to use it retorting against my announcement that it was time to brush his teeth was both irrelevant and slightly rude.
All I know is that I am very picky about what my kids watch and I will hands-down tell ya that Spongebob taught my kids some advanced vocabulary, how to be polite AND how to create a bitchen bonfire under water.