I don't allow my children to see meaningless entertainment: Farah Khan

Veteran choreographer and director Farah Khan is a doting mother to her triplicates. The dance director cum actress was speaking on the launch of the new Nickelodeon stable channel Nick JR recently. “I try to devote my maximum time to them. Apart from work, I don’t socialize. Now since they have started to go to school and class (karate), they have their social lives and then I feel like outsider. For the last one week, they have been busy with birthday parties,” Farah avers. The dance director says that as a mother, she is very careful to monitor the kind of shows her kids watch, “I don’t want to allow them to check out meaningless entertainment which we make. Many times, when they come into my room I am forced to change channels. They are permitted to watch only kid’s channels, which not only entertain children of their age, but also help them learn a lot. Nick makes good programmes like Dora the Explorer. In fact, my daughter learnt a few French words thanks to this show.” Going down memory lane, she says that her brother Sajid was a real prankster as a kid. “Every day we had complaints either from the school or neighbours about Sajid playing pranks.” She smarty avoids mentioning which cartoon character she loved as a child (may be from competition networks) but goes on to add,“Hats off to the channels today for successfully attempting to make new characters.” When asked as to what type of mother she was, Farah quips, “Unlike my very strict mom, I try to point out their (children’s) faults. Many times my nanny requested me to scream at them but I can’t for they get scared of me beating them up.” I never scream at my children but do so only on my film set. Coming back to content on kids channel, Farah observes, “Hats off for it is very difficult to make software for demographic that has such a limited attention span. Being a mother, I know how they keep moving from one thing to other. So, to create programmes which hold their attention is a challenging. And if they keep watching it, it means that they love it.”