Appreciating Disney. ...Really?

Alright, I have to admit it, I'm appreciative of the good folks at Disney Studios.

"Why?" you might ask, and rightly so. But if you've got any pre-teen children, chances are that they have tuned in to the Disney Channel after school.

First, let me say that the television watching in our household is fairly restricted. No television zombies here (and we do not own any Xbox or Playstation type devices). But for my daughter, who just turned eleven, there are very few opportunities for extra-curricular enjoyment.

Although she's in middle school, she's too young still to take part in any of the competetive sports, other than as the occassional "practice" (the one exception is basketball, which she played last year and plans to play again this year). She is in Girl Scouts, which she enjoys but isn't all consumed with.

At home, her brothers might watch the Cartoon Network or something on Nickelodeon, but those shows are mostly beneath her. As she was growing up, the Olsen Twins made a number of movies that were aimed at the pre-teens (or "Tweens" as they are referred to these days), but but now that the Olsen girls are older and in to some health problems, they've become inappropriate viewing.

Regular television shows offer fare such as Gilmore Girls, which isn't really appropriate, and so comes the Disney Channel, with shows such as: That's So Raven, Hannah Montana, The Suite life of Zach and Cody, and a few others.

Now I personally am not too fond of these shows (in fact, I can't stand the acting on Hannah Montana), but they are well written for their target audience, the Tweens. The shows deal with issues of friendship, trust, respect, dating, and other, basically harmless issues but issues that are affecting children of this age. And these shows are doing it in a sit-com setting, so the morals aren't being thrown in the face.

I really do appreciate that the Disney Channel is able to reach children, like my daughter, on these topics, in ways that the kids will pay attention. Of course, too much of anything is not good, and I don't want my daughter veggie-ing out in front of the television, but for that hour in the day when she's done her homework and doesn't have Scouts or basketball, or whatever, it's nice to know that she'll turn on a show that I'm comfortable allowing her to watch.