TEACHABLE LESSONS AT "HOME"

May I suggest that if you are a parent with (young) children still living at home, you encourage your family to make watching ABC's reality series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition a weekly assignment. Mrs. Media Matters and I enjoy this show. Every episode depicts an American family down on their luck, through circumstances of illness, injury, poverty or the like. The program, and it's charismatic carpentry staff, come on the scene and renovates the family's home. Through this gesture, the family is encouraged and enlivened and given a second chance. Home Makeover, I as I like to call it, is always fun, silly and moving. Mrs. Media Matters and I cry almost every episode as the individuals and families are touched by the generosity that has been bestowed upon them. It is dramatic and heartwarming TV at it's best. But even more than that, it can serve as an object lesson to American children and families who have never known poverty or severe trauma. Watch it with your kids and discuss the program and the family afterwards. Remind your children of all that they have to be grateful for and encourage them to take risks in helping those less fortunate, as Ty, Paige, Paul, Tracy and Michael do every week.