Ignorant People

The British have a reputation of being a stuffy bunch, and this story I am going to share with you is about people in the U.K..

Speaking from personal experience, I must tell you the same complaints would happen right here in the United States.

Here is what is happening in the U.K.

Parents are so offended by the disability of a children's TV program host that the BBC has received nine formal complaints and hundreds of nasty messages on its Web site, some of which were so vicious they had to be removed.


The disturbing campaign of hate being directed at Cerrie Burnell, a host of the children's television show CBeebies, who was born missing the lower section of her right arm.

Some of the complaints:

"Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability?" wrote one adult on the CBeebies website.

Other adults claimed that their children were asking difficult questions as a result.

"I didn't want to let my children watch the filler bits on The Bedtime Hour last night because I know it would have played on my eldest daughter's mind and possibly caused sleep problems," said one message.

The BBC received nine other complaints by phone.

In fact, some of the comments were so disturbing, they had to be removed from the site.

Burnell responded recently, saying that the negative comments "are indicative of a wider problem of disabled representation in the media as a whole, which is why it's so important for there to be more disabled role models in every area of the media."

She is partially right, however the real problem exists with adults and their fear of actually sitting down with their children and having a meaningful conversation with them.

Kids do not need to be sheltered, rather they need to be exposed to the real world.

For way too long our society has placed so much emphasis on beauty, as defined by physical perfection, that this woman would be unpopular if she did have two hands, but a flat chest.

Children are born curious and as a parent it is our job to teach them about everything.

Should we not teach our children at a young age that there are people that have a handicap and it's not nice to stare at them, rather it is proper to accept them as they are?

I can speak from experience since I suffered a minor loss of limb as a child. Were my childhood peers cruel in some of their comments? Sure they were, but they did not lose sleep at night because of what they were seeing everyday.

Parents may be horrified at this but kids really don't have the same issues as adults. In fact they really have the understanding about differences if they are explained correctly.

Another prime example of adults being stupid happened when my son was in kindergarten and my wife had an in-home daycare.

My son had surgery which required a monk cut haircut (shaved bald front to just behind ears) after which during the healing process he had stitches from ear to ear across the top of his head and he also had two black eyes.

As parents, my wife Vicki and I had always taught our kids things like this happen and you keep moving forward.

Even though we knew the black eyes would soon disappear, the stitches would soon be gone, and the hair would also soon grow back, we felt the best thing would be for our son to return to school as if this was no big deal and to be with the other kids.

We had concerns that the teacher might be a little uncomfortable so we arranged a meeting with her including our son.

The teacher wanted our son back in class right away, informed us that it would be a great learning experience for the other children and thanked us for allowing her that opportunity.

I mentioned the daycare my wife had at the time because in that day care was a girl that was in our son's kindergarten class that my wife watched after school.

The parent of the little girl had not seen our son until she came to pick her up at the end of the day our son returned to school.

Not only had our son been at school all day with the girl but the two of them were at our house playing together for hours until her mom picked her up.

The lady called later that evening to inform my wife that her daycare services would no longer be required as she was afraid that our son's appearance would cause trauma for her daughter.

The scary thing is the parents' reaction to this. Rather than explaining to their children they choose to shelter them which in our case was funny because the girl continued going to school everyday and playing with our son.

In the case of this young lady kids are watching on T.V., when parents do not explain unusual things to their children so they can understand what is going on, rather than their imaginations running wild, ignorance will be what frightens them.

Congratulations to the BBC for having the foresight to hire this young lady for the host of the program.

To the parents that complained, you are pathetic and good luck explaining the commercials your kids watch for Viagra, Male Enhancement pills, tampons , douches etc.