The stories have a common theme so that the stories can be seen as variations on a theme. The theme should have something to do with children, it seems, since that is a connecting thread, and it should have something to do with entertainment and mainstream media, since that is the other connecting thread. So perhaps the first story, "I CAN SPEAK!" can be used as a synecdoche for examining what the connections might be.
In that story, parents are using their children as an object of entertainment. Notice that instead of letting their kid watch television mindlessly, it seems they are viewing their child as a television with legs. They are the kids who were raised on television, one might say. This idea is underscored by the fact that they genuinely don't understand human psychology. They put the mask on the child (a symbol for a hidden aspect of one's identity) and are surprised by the deep ideas that the child elaborates.
Why should the parents be surprised by their child? The point of parents is to teach a child how to develop their primordial character traits into something socially acceptable, but these parents are downright astonished. The amazement comes from the fact that their opinion of human nature has been watered down by their own tacit acceptance of the depictions of humans that come from television, which are typically insipid and two-dimensional. The child has not been inundated by that influence, so it speaks from a more enlightened place that they aren't ready for.
