Recently my kids discovered pranks. Thankfully they haven’t branched out into some of the more dangerous or messy ones, but they’ve tried a few. This has caused some hurt feelings and sadness in our house.
I’m not a big fan of pranks, because it’s all to easy for one person to cross a line and hurt feelings or destroy a friendship.
{This post contains affiliate links. I received a free copy of the DVD for my opinion. See my full Disclosure statement for more information}
My boys have tried out a few pranks, mainly the pretending to be someone else type, but we’ve had a few struggles as I talked about this.
Enter the new Veggietales movie, Maclarry & Stinky Cheese Battle
But, I focused on the pranks. The boys still think they were funny to see the Veggies get their hair shaved, and other things. But as we talked more and focused on how it feels to you when that happens, they started to understand more of my unhappiness with a few recent ideas.
Afterwards the kids had fun using the word search on the Veggietales MacLarry page, there’s several fun printables and things to do there.
Overall, I’d say this came to us at the perfect time, almost like there’s a “Higher Power” in charge and organizing things……… It gave us some great conversations to have, and I need to watch it with them again to have some more conversations.
As a side note, I do miss the old Veggietales where it was a Bible story. These newer ones are moral tales and do include Bible verses at the end, but it’s missing some of my favorite parts of Veggietales, seeing Bible stories acted out in new and fun ways. That’s my one complaint about the current run of Veggietales, there are plenty of Bible stories left to mine for ideas, if they can do a great retelling of David and Bathsheba for preschoolers, King George and the Ducky
If you’re interested in getting your own copy of MacLarry, you can pick it up at most Christian bookstores, Amazon {my affiliate: Maclarry & Stinky Cheese Battle
We haven’t watched any of the newer VeggieTales – for pretty much the reasons you mentioned. I’m glad Phil Vischer stepped back and is continuing to work through the Bible – but we miss seeing the old Veggie gang doing it (or at least I do 🙂
A “higher power” – imagine that! Not to compare God with A-Team, but there are times when I can almost imagine Him saying, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Oh, I can imagine what pranks your boys can play if they team up. We were just watching a Halloween episode of Big Bang from season 5 with some hilarious pranks. I wouldn’t, however, chose to be on the receiving side of them!
Neither would I, if it’s what I’m thinking of, been awhile since I saw that one. I am really hoping they never get good at pranks.
Oh pranks…it’s a necessary concept to understand. My 4 year old tries to “joke” and sometimes it’s not so funny and/or a borderline lie. Argh. A work in progress…
My kids had that problem too, I think we’ve mostly gotten through to them a lie is not a joke.
I am glad that, so far, my boys haven’t thought of doing pranks. I am very sensitive to this, and in fact, some might say, overly sensitive, so it would affect me deeply if they did pranks. I think you handled it so well. I also agree with you that I miss the original Veggie Tales as well. I wonder if that is pretty universal?
I’m fairly sensitive to it as well, having been the recipient of some cruel pranks as a kid.
We have the opposite problem in a way, because the mummy and daddy in this house-hold are full of pranks and jokes (Gary is Irish after all), so our children had to learn fairly quickly to hold their own. Now, as they are older, it’s pay back time big style!! But it sort of characterises our family, so we’re okay with that. I do feel a bit for any on-looker and wonder what they might think!!
Sarcasm is the “tool” of choice here, so the kids have figured out early on to think if Mommy is really going to hang them from their toes or not.
I guess because over here in the U.S. sooooo many of the pranks highlighted and applauded in movies are mean-spirited that is the example kids see and emulate, and so that’s what I dislike. The light hearted fun ones I don’t see as much.