By Sean Sullivan Lagniappe columnist

I just finished arguing with my two-year-old daughter about the limits of her television entertainment options. I lost, by the way. It’s not that she wants to watch something inappropriate but that she has her heart set on a particular program and a specific episode that wasn’t available right then on any of the four children’s networks.

Not only was the show not on any of the stations but also her choice wasn’t one of the dozens of saved shows stockpiled by our cable provider. Neither was it on any of the piles of DVDs shelved in her room.

I do realize that possibly the combination of being two years old and already being a master manipulator might have lead to her sending me on a quest for a show that could never be found. While round one went to my daughter I regrouped in my corner and came back strong when the bell rang again.

Of course, in my comeback I could hear and feel myself becoming my father as I stood there, arms folded, and began my dissertation on how lucky she was to lead the life she does.

I believe I made the complete transition into my father as I heard myself say “You know how many children in the world don’t have any shows to watch and here you sit and you’re not getting up from this couch until you watch at least part of one of these shows.”

I was rolling when I hit the “there are children in Asia that have no entertainment options and if you don’t appreciate what you have I’m going to have to box up these Dora DVDs and send them to a needy child” song and dance.

Mom joined in and together we engaged the double-pronged guilt assault by telling her how it was back when we were children. We informed her that back in the day, kids’ programming, in the form of cartoons, was only on once a week on Saturday mornings. I guess this will be our generation’s “I had to walk to school bare-foot uphill both ways” lecture to our children.

Our generation can scare our kids with tough times stories like having to watch a cartoon you didn’t like until the one you did like came on. Maybe telling my daughter a story like back when “we had to sit through a whole episode of Muppet Babies just to get to watch He-Man…that’s back when times were tough…missy” will scare her into appreciating the options she has.

American children are spoiled when it comes to entertainment options in the electronic media realm. I’ll bet if you brought in some kids from Kazakhstan, Namibia or Mongolia they would be thankful for a chance just to watch re-runs of the Snorks once a week and if you doubled it with an episode of Jabber Jaw they would be so entertained they would emit blissful sighs between spoonfuls of sugar cereal.

That said, I imagine if you sat the adults from those same countries down they would enjoy the shows as well…I mean, hell, Jabber is a talking shark and who doesn’t like that?

So how will the newest generation of American entertainment consumers stay satisfied for life if they are already bored in their earliest years? The answer is outside.

I’ve instituted a new program of outside play. While my daughter has always spent time outside playing in the yard or at the park on toys “especially designed to promote the child’s cognitive and physical development,” I’ve thrown those boring and safe activities to the wind in exchange for mindless activities like throwing pinecones and dirt clods and while it is no Dora or Bob the Builder or even Muppet Babies I think I might have a hit on my hands.

Sean Sullivan is Lagniappe lagniappe columnist. Contact him at ssullivan@lagniappemobile.com.

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