Before I got pregnant, Kate watched a Baby Einstein or two a week. Not quite the AAP recommendation of no TV under age two, but not very much at all. Then, I got pregnant and sick and she started watching television regularly. Even though I let Kate watch TV (which she really likes), I still have principles.
Shows I Can’t Stand Enough to Forbid in Our Home
Barney
Boobah
Calliou
the Doodlebops
Teletubbies
Kate’s favorite show: the Wiggles
Mike and I’s favorite kiddie show: Charlie and Lola
Other shows we all enjoy: Reading Between the Lions, Mister Rodger’s Neighborhood
What do you love and hate on kiddie TV?
I like Arthur. My sister still watches that a lot. She’s finally grown out of Barney, for the most part, or so I hear.
The thing I hate about Kids’ TV is the commercials! We do not have a TV, but we do have a monitor to watch videos/DVDs. My mother–who fears her grandchildren will miss out on the important aspects of childhood by not seeing popular TV shows, sends them things she tapes. We do allow them to watch Bob the Builder and Between the Lions and some other innocuous shows, but the commercials that scream to my children that they NEED their products–that their little lives won’t be happy or comlete without their plastic noisemakers– make me sick. We have started requesting that Grandma delete the commercials which means she must watch the shows as she tapes them…..which has resulted in fewer tapes sent to our home…..we are all happy now!
I hate boobah. hate it. And I tried to train the girls to hate it, too. But… Ashley decided she likes it.
They don’t watch it. But when we see the stupid, freakish things in the store, I saw we don’t like those things, and she says that she does.
Rebellious child.
Kid’s TV… what? There is programming aimed just at kids? I had NO idea! lol, just kidding. ;)
Seriously, I am finding myself not a fan of almost ALL kid’s TV. C had a Sesame Street thing going for a while (she fell for Elmo first, then fell HARD for Ernie, of all charcters!). I found that after a few weeks I developed a physical aversion to SS, literally made me feel sick (possibly pregnancy-related?) I personally don’t mind/occassionally enjoy Thomas the Train & Mr Rodgers but we only watch those about once a week. Once or twice a week she will watch one of her Baby Einstein videos, & I like those b/c of the music. :)
I find that if I don’t turn it on for a few days, she forgets about it, basically. (But maybe it’s b/c she’s only 23 months?)
Love Reading Between the Lions as well as Angelina Ballerina.
loathe the boobahs. except for the sections with the people who are trying to solve some problem without talking. those are actually really good.
despise the teletubbies. except for the sections with the kids who are doing something, like herding sheep and making tortillas.
could take or leave barney. the dinosaurs are bizarre, but the kids songs and games are okay. could also take or leave clifford.
other’s i don’t like:
caillou the whiner
arthur
backyardigans
doodlebops. oh my GOSH i can’t stand this show.
shows we like and watch:
mr. rogers neighborhood
between the lions
sesame street (within reason)
thomas the tank engine
angelina ballerina
henry also likes dragon tales. not sure why, tho.
I don’t have children so I don’t watch much childrens television, but one show that I managed to catch over the summer and absolutely fell in love with was The Kaolla Brothers on the Disney Channel.
We don’t have network or cable or public TV in our house, so we only have DVD’s and Videos to watch. My little one is obsessed, I tell you, with Little Einsteins, which is apparently on every morning on Disney Playhouse, but i just have a DVD. We think it is very educational and interesting, although sometimes slightly politically correct and therefore ridiculous (example: The Butterfly United Nations delegation is fighting and they are brought together in perfect harmony by the singing of Beethoven’s “Freude, Freude” from Symphony 9…we always skip that part) Other than that, its great.
Is Reading Rainbow still around?
Rebekah
Boy oh boy, I’m behind the times. I have only seen Barney on your list, and I have a vague idea what a teletubbie looks like. See what happens when your kids grow up?
My husband loathes Mr. Rogers but I really liked it when my kids are young. There are longer sequences (which help attention spans) and the kids really connect with him.
Maybe it’s in Amusing Ourselves To Death – some book I read talked about how Sesame Street type programs train our children to be bored unless there are frequent camera changes.
I had a child seven years younger than his closest sibling. When I was teaching the boys at home, it was a challenge to occupy The Bear (spoken with affection) while we parsed Latin nouns, etc. I invested in tapes and CDs, books on tape, stories on tape and he played in his room and listened to tapes. Consequently his vocabulary is huge and he has a good ear for languages. Now we have a lending library that is regularly used by many friends.
…when my kids *were* young…
My memory is coming back – Is Wishbone still out there? The entire family liked Wishbone episodes. And learned the plot lines of famous books along the way…
i LOVE Read Between the Lions! I really like Johnny Consonanti and the Vowelles! It’s an incredibly clever show.
Everything about the Doodlebops really disturb me.
Stephen also likes JoJo’s Circus.
We all hate Barney.
Lisa,
One nice thing about Playhouse Disney and PBS (basically the channels Kate watches) is no commercials!
Mrs. Butler,
Mike likes Little Einsteins a lot, they are on at a good time for me to sleep in and Kate to eat toast so she’s been watching it lately.
Rebekah,
Reading Rainbow is still around, but Kate doesn’t like it. It’s a little over her head.
at home we don’t have a tv, but here at my parents, the kids think they should have free access all day.
love:
between the lions
reading rainbow
little bear
dragontales
mr rogers
croc hunter (lol)
dora
baby story
hate:
the doodlebops- noah ran out of the room screaming?!!!
oswald
the others most mentioned
LOVE LOVE LOVE Between the Lions. It’s sooo good, and I love to use it at school…
I love Mr. Roger. :-)
Shortly after we first moved to Hampton, VA, in 1998, I found out we were expecting our fifth baby. We had to live in the temporary facility on base (a nice little hotel suite with kitchen, dining/living room and one bedroom, and maid service), and I wound up spending almost the whole five weeks lying on the couch being sick and letting the kids watch TV. I found out I really liked “Little Bear” and “Thomas the Tank Engine,” sorta liked “Reading Rainbow” and “Wishbone,” and hated most of everything else. Besides those few shows, the only thing I’d let them watch was old movies on TCM or AMC – or gardening and decorating shows.
;-)
When I was preggers with #3, I would nap on the couch and have one toddler in the high chair and the baby in the bouncy seat and put on VeggieTales. We only owned three, and had no TV reception. Oh, yes–those were the days I adored VT simply for the nap it brought me!
We have brainwashed our boys about certain shows like Barney and Teletubbies. “Teletubbies–oooh, yuck! Not even GIRLS like teletubbies!” That is in contrast to “Barbies! Oooh, yuck! Only GIRLS like Barbies!”
Having no children, I don’t have much experience with the children’s programming of today, but I do remember I was never much of a fan of Mr. Rogers. It was kind of boring, though I did like the tiger tht lived in the clock, was it? My cousin’s little boy was a huge fan of Rolie Polie Ollie for a while, which I grew to love. He also was a fan of the wiggles. I could never quite get over the grown men acting so goofy, but they sure do make a living!! Apparently those guys are the highest paid Australian performers – topping even Nicole Kidman and Russell Crow, or so my boss says!
We only have 2 tapes for Olivia, and we never watch them. But if we did, it would be Baby Mozart and a VHS of Mercer Mayer stories.
I don’t have a particular aversion to TV, it’s just with the layout of our apartment, now that Liv can walk it’s very inconvenient to be in the room with the TV.
I’ve never even heard of half of the shows that were mentioned. I’d be interested in seeing Between the Lions, it has a clever name. I think that Boobah is from the devil. The one time I watched it there were children chanting to a the “Story-Teller” in a psycodelic rainbow swirling room, and they had to offer a rainbow sacrifice to hear a story. Then they did another chant while dancing around. It was soooooo creepy. And I’m not usually looking for stuff like that in TV, but I don’t think I could ever let Olivia watch that.
everything I’ve found on the tube is uber-annoying, so it’s all baby einstein for us (or baby story or other shows mama likes). mama can definitely relate to turning it on more now that she’s prego.
Bob,
You need to try Between the Lions on PBS and Charlie and Lola on Disney. They are both cool enough that I will sit and watch, too. Between the Lions is a show about lions who run a library and is all about phonics, etc. Charlie and Lola are two British kids, a big brother and a younger sister, and the little sister is always getting into trouble or unwilling to try new things and her older brother helps her out. Every one I’ve seen literally makes me laugh out loud, and they are only 15 minute shows. I also saw book versions of some of my favorites recently, you can look for “I will never, not ever eat a tomato” – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0763611883/
Lazytown!! If you want a good laugh check it out on Noggin or Nick. Jr.
And it’s all about exercise.
coleman seems to love dora these days above all others, though he of the square pants and pineapple house runs a close second.
me? i’d much rather watch spongebob, but then, i’m from the old school: less educational value == more funny
;)