My four-year-old daughter is easily influenced by television commercials.

I discovered this fact over the weekend, while she was watching Saturday morning cartoons on television.

I was in the kitchen, doing kitchen type stuff, when she came over to me and asked for some chicken noodle soup.

She’s never shown any interest in any type of soup in all her life, and now, out of the blue, on a Saturday in August, she decides to ask me for some.

"You want chicken noodle soup?" I ask.

"Oh yes please. Like the kids were eating. It’s ‘mmm mmm good’," she explained.

I checked my soup supplies and did in fact have a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup on hand.

"I’ll make it if you will eat it," I said, knowing that I would probably be eating most of it.

"Put it in the microwave!" She exclaimed.

"Oh no, I’m going to make it the old-fashioned way, on the stove," I said, laughing at myself for thinking making soup from a can on the stove was old-fashioned.

"Ugh! That’s going to take too long," she said.

She actually ate most of her bowl of soup, although she was disappointed because the commercial she saw had children eating chicken and stars soup, not plain old chicken noodle soup.

Of course, she wants everything she sees on television. She saw a commercial for the new "V-chip," which is a control inside of a television which controls the content children are allowed to watch.

"Oh, can we get that Mom!"

I explained to her that since we only had four channels, I could easily be the V-chip in the family and control her television watching by myself.

"Awwww," she said.

In just a couple of hours of Saturday morning children’s programming, my daughter asked me for a V-chip television, a Polly Pocket doll, some things you tie on to your shoes so you don’t have to tie them yourself, and chicken noodle soup. She also asked me if we could go surfing like the kids she saw on television.

"Maybe some day," I said, knowing that the chances of me getting on a surfboard were about as high as me winning the lottery; taking into consideration I never play the lottery.

My husband and I have begun recording the television shows we like to watch so that we can watch them uninterrupted at some point when all the children are sleeping and we are less likely to be distracted.

My only concern, of course, is that we always fast-forward through the commercials.

"How are we going to know what to buy if we don’t watch the commercials?" I tease.

Perhaps I could just bring my daughter, as she seems to know what the television thinks we need to buy.

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