Kids, don’t do this at home

Currently popular features on TV shows this season are “talent” tilts that are so competitive that contestants push their performances past previously established and observed safety limits, resulting in unacceptable danger and injury to some particularly daring entrants.

We recall seeing a boy doing a risky dance number—and falling through the planks of his hastily configured “stage.”

Another dancer-gymnast-acrobat got dizzy performing a series of impressive and “impossible” dance-sport stunts.

In addition, other contestants desperate to make jurors give them the highest marks have endured bad falls, muscles painfully pulled, bones unnaturally extended during sudden splits—etc.

It’s bad enough when the contestants are adults who are aware of the inordinate risks they’re taking (and should know better). But, when the performer is a child, the situation becomes much more dangerous.

Too many coaches push or even force child talents to risk limb and life to give them a “winning” edge. Once, we saw a little girl being thrown this way and that in an increasingly hectic and risky way, ignoring the fact that her musculature and bone structure weren’t fully formed. She obediently endured the physical abuse, but she was clearly scared and in pain. —What were her adult trainers and handlers thinking?

Aside from the danger and pain that risky talent acts threaten and inflict on contestants, both juvenile and adult, excessive risk and strain in talent acts should be disallowed, because of their inherent “gaya-gaya” influence on child viewers.

Kids just love to imitate the unusual and exciting acts they see on TV, not realizing that they are much too dangerous for them. When parents and other older people aren’t around to supervise them, children could and do get hurt imitating those seemingly easy-breezy feats. —So, kids, don’t do this at home!

The TV shows involved should also help in this regard by insisting that performers observe safety limitations, especially when the talents are young and thus more vulnerable—and “ape-able.” In addition, judges of TV talent tilts should be instructed to not favor and gush over “extreme” acts—and to overtly state a preference for more creative concepts that don’t put performers at risk.

In other words, everybody should remind himself that TV exerts a powerful “imitative” influence on viewers, especially the gullible youth. For kids not to attempt their dangerous versions of “extreme” acts at home, they shouldn’t be done on TV to begin with!