Have you seen him? Fred Figglehorn on YouTube. Have you seen him? Ok, I will admit Fred is my guilty pleasure and Paris’s number one channel she watches on YouTube. He is a ficitonal character made up by a young teenager named Lucas Cruikshank from Nebraska who portrays a 6-year-old from a dysfunctional home life and has “anger management issues”. These simply made and hysterical videos were the first to reach the 1,000,000 mark within a year of first arriving on the scene. Fred is my YouTube hero.
Being that we just moved into our new place, we just got cable. Until we did, Fred was constantly on. His tag line, “Hey, it’s Fred” in his high pitched, sped up and over the top entertaining voice permeated throughout my house much like Sponge Bob did before she discovered Fred. And if it wasn’t on the computer, Paris loves to just randomly walk up to me, toe to toe, all 3 ft whatever, stare up at me with her red hair and freckles and a big cheezy grin and say, “Hey, it’s Fred.” Not only that, but my 13 year old client had one of his t-shirts that she gave to Paris which of course she loves. It’s Fred’s world around here and I’m part annoyed and amused at the same time.
I must admit, I do feel a bit guilty at times letting her watch them because they offer no educational value. It feels like as a parent that we are constantly in a position of allowing or denying our children exposure to different things. And if I went along with a more conservative approach to raising my daughter then I might think letting her watch videos like this may contribute to her being undernourished emotionally and mentally as a child and could contribute to later issues in life. But I tend to think that there is value even in this ridiculousness and wackiness depending on how you look at it. Continue reading »