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.
The way I see it is if one can look at Fred as not only a character but Lucas the boy who created him, the value is in freedom of expression, creativity, humor and the sheer intelligence of depicting a persona that is actually not too far fetched from the reality a lot of kids are dealing with i.e. alcholic parents, latch key kids, being on meds, and bullying. That is worth teaching to our kids. And sometimes wisdom comes from even the stupidest things.
Single mom, organizing and productivity expert, Tracy Paye has been transforming spaces into livable and lovable environments since the age of 12. Tracy’s passion is to help people experience freedom from their stuff and re-design their lives. Through hands on organizing, coaching, consulting, speaking engagements, media appearances, and writing Tracy has positively impacted countless people by inspiring, empowering and motivating people to take action and gain control of their lives. If you are interested to learn more about Tracy’s organizing services you can visit her site at www.tracypaye.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/missorganized.
