Question: What can I let my kids watch?

So here’s the thing. We have a TV but we don’t have an antenna or cable or a dish. So we don’t watch commercial TV. But we do watch TV. Carefully selected videos and DVDs have cycled their way through our living room for the past five and a half years with no sign of stopping. But now, with a three and five year old, I’m running into a bit of a quandary about what to let them watch.

Baby Einstein is a scam and is way too young for my kids now.

The Wiggles, well, you know how I feel about them. My husband can’t have them on in the house when he’s home. He gets apoplectic.

The Doodlebops are so vacuous they make The Wiggles look like the freakin’ Algonquin Round Table.

Highly moral vegetables?

Thomas bores them.

They’re sick of Blues Clues (which I personally thought was awesome).

They’re over Dora.

Kipper is too young for them. It moves about as fast as molasses in January.

For a while, Charlie and Lola were big. I think I loved them more than my kids did.
They are so over C&L now.

Hey, you say, how about Disney?

Ahh….Disney…you’d think anything Disney would be safe, good, family-friendly.

You'd be wrong.

You see, it depends on how you define family. Disney is way traditional and kind of limiting in that department. The happily ever after Disney-style involves a gorgeous woman and a gorgeous man getting married. Kind of a narrow view of family if you ask me.


Let's analyze a little deeper: Disney movies tend to have impossibly pretty, perfect-looking young women who are in desperate need of a man to help them solve their problems. Mothers are often absent/dead, or only appear as evil stepmothers or window dressing next to the king. It’s quite annoying and a pretty narrow stereotype upon which to base one's life.

My daughter once picked a DVD from the library that featured Disney princesses living little vignettes that supposedly taught that “beauty comes from within,” but were really about great outfits and cute hair. Argh.

So when I look at Ariel , I think, will she trade who she really is to be with a man? That’s messed up. Now, caveat: I haven’t seen the movie in a LONG time, but the take-home seemed to be that her relationship with her boyfriend was more important than her own identity, her relationship with her father, or the rest of her world, for that matter.

Clearly I have too much time to think about these things.

Even 101 Dalmatians? Puppy, right? Not so tame. Lots of “you idiot!” and “stupid” and “shut ups.” Beauty and the Beast? At least the main character isn’t BLONDE, and likes to read. She’s a pretty decent heroine, but the Beast parts is scary for my three-year old, and even my five-year old isn’t keen on the fight scene. In fact, he’s never watched the end of the movie. It’s fast forward and they lived happily ever after.

Where does that leave us?

There’s a really cool DVD called ANIMUSIC. It’s music played by computer-simulated instruments and it’s super cool. But how many times can the kids watch lasers and pseudo-sci-fi music without going nuts? (Oh wait, that’s me.)

Right now we’re on a Bob the Builder kick, from Netflix. That’s a pretty wholesome show. But I still find things to pick apart. Why is the main female vehicle named “Dizzy?” What’s going on between Bob and Wendy? Who’s this scarecrow guy? He freaks me out. I think his name is Dump or Spud or Skid or something. Still, Bob’s where it’s at for now.

So tell me, analytical minds out there, if I’m going to let my kids watch something, and I am, what can it be?