Sam seems to be backsliding in her television. Used to be, we could count on her watching Sesame Street, then she moved up to Curious George. I liked both of these shows, since they were educational and had bits of humor scattered throughout them that adults could relate to. Best of all, they seemed to encourage a joy of learning and, in the case of Curious George, an appreciation of science and education. Great!
Now, though, all Sam ever wants to watch are junk like Dragon Tales and (ugh…) The Care Bears. These are light on educational value, opting instead to focus on pro-social messages like sharing, caring, more caring, sharing some more, hugs, a little more caring, and spraying colorful lights from your stomach. It’s not that I mind this kind of stuff (indeed, Sam could use a little more encouragement in some of those areas), but it’s just that these shows are like nails on a blackboard to watch or even overhear. I mean, would it kill Tenderheart to shut up about his feelings and talk about algebra for a few minutes? Would it?
Mandy, for her part, continues to mostly ignore the television regardless of the programming, except for a few minutes at the beginning of each show. It’s almost as if by the time the opening credits and theme song are over she feels that she pretty much has it figured out and should move on to something more productive. She is, however, fond of bellowing out the lyrics to the Dragon Tales theme song:
Dragon tales! Dragon Tales!
It Dragon Tales!
Dragon Tales! Dragon Tales!
[Repeat]
Let me tell you, there’s nothing like it.
Thank you. You’ve actually made me thankful that Annalie is currently into Spongebob Squarepants. At least that’s actually funny from time to time, and never cloying. Have you tried getting Sam interested in some of the science-y shows? Annalie loves “Zoboomafoo” and “Bindi the Jungle Girl” and will spout off random animal facts she’s learned from both.
No, I haven’t heard of those. I may have to check them out. I prefer to stick with PBS to limit the commercials. That’s also the beauty of TiVo: Even if they put commercials as bumpers at the beginning and end of each show, you can pretty easily skip all that. And Sam has never experienced channel surfing. She just watches a show, and then it’s over unless we start another one for her. There’s no sliding into one show after another. And we can more easily control what kinds of shows he even knows exist, though somehow we got into the Care Bears thing regardless.
The Care Bears facination only came about because she inherited some old Care Bears VHS tapes from her older cousin Molly. : ) I would have never intentionally started her down that road. ; )
Wow – on Sat. morning it was a great occasion – at our house.The children sat in the family room, I made pancakes and they wated Howdy Doody.