I want to be in America

Phoebe sees a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the back of a Cornflakes packet. "Daddy, I think I want to go to New York," she says.

Blimey! When I was her age I don't think I even knew that there was a city called New York, let alone what or where the Statue of Liberty was.

I ask Phoebe how she knows, and she rather unhelpfully replies that she "just knowed". I suppose she must have seen it on television: the networks here are so saturated with American TV shows (including four episodes of Friends each weekend, plus Monk, House, Gilmore Girls and some soap-opera-like offerings that I can't remember the names of) that it is almost inevitable that the kids will have some familiarity with major U.S. landmarks.

But doesn't this indicate that Emily and Phoebe spend too much time in front of the television - and that we are Bad Parents, indifferent to the impact that it might have on their young and impressionable minds?

This is a question to which I shall have to give serious thought...