My husband argues with me perpetually. If you have followed my blog even once, you will notice it’s a recurring theme.

One of his pet peeves is that I limit screen time for the kids. He fears that at 5 and (just-turned) 4, they are not able to keep up with their peers. After all, a child who is unable to hold an informed opinion and keep up his or her end of the conversation when it comes to pop culture is destined to face severe social anxiousness when he or she grows up. As you may have realised, I don’t take much of what my husband says seriously, but this is a whole new level of nonsense. For one, socialising is the only aspect of their lives where my children are super-achievers. The second reason is because I have read about and experienced the effects of excessive screen-time. Not one to let go of a topic when he has sunk his teeth into it, my argumentative Indian insists that he grew up being fed on a steady diet of TV and I should just take a look at how well he turned out.

Ah well, he is a master of shooting himself in the foot because if I was wavering till then, I now had proof positive of the disastrous results.

Another reason he shouldn’t worry is because my kids are masters of all 50s – 80s pop culture. They may sing rather tunelessly themselves, but they have a good ear and can recognise the theme music of Superman, Ironman, Wonder Woman, Star Wars, He Man and Pink Panther as well as they can Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol and Frozen. Our son surprised us the other day. He heard some music that he has never heard before and piped up immediately – “Ah! That James person!”

It was indeed the James Bond theme music. My husband insists he has never introduced the secret agent to them, not even on the sly. He may have mentioned 007 in one of his  conversations and hummed the music, but we didn’t know that the kids were listening. Needless to say, my husband was now beaming at our son. My daughter may look exactly like him, but she is more like me when it comes to interests. She holds a passing interest in superheroes but it’s more just to play with her little brother. A spy would definitely never make the cut. On the other hand, I’m convinced that she will become the zookeeper or conservationist that I wanted to be, but didn’t. She looked confused and said, “Who?!” She looked at my husband looking like his heart would burst with pride and racked her brain to think of the most impressive person she had heard of. “Ah! I know! He’s Jane Goodall’s brother!”