As I've mentioned before, conscientious parenting is really hard. Shawn and I have been a bit disappointed at the number of Disney flicks his mom has shown to Hunter, since we'd hoped to be able to introduce them to him ourselves, partially because we love introducing Hunter to new things, but partially so we can answer his inevitable questions and help frame some of the "lessons."

Monday, we watched "The Incredibles" together. On the one hand, Shawn and I love the "family working together" aspect of the film. On the other, what is the deal with the "if everyone is special/super, then no one will be" -- ?!??

I am assuming this is a backlash against the part of the "self-esteem movement" that believed that giving kids a bunch of meaningless praise, regardless of their abilities or achievements, would automatically make kids feel good about themselves. The movie also taps into an anti- "go along to get along/dumb yourself down" message which I kind of agree with, except that it seems to imply that only Special people have any value, which is a bunch of crap.

Thus the need for parental guidance. I ended up explaining to Hunter that Syndrome thought that he could be a superhero by giving himself powers and making himself famous, but that's not what being a superhero is about. Being a superhero, a hero, or even just a decent human being, is about helping people, and the only person Syndrome wanted to help was himself.

It may not seem like that big of a deal, but, day in, day out, trying to indoctrinate our little one into believing that the purpose of life is to be nice to people and help others while remaining respectful of his own feelings and experiences can be kind of exhausting.