There is no need for explicit, spelled out lessons. Also conflicts can arise externally, and flawless people can solve them. That still can be an example, can't it.
Also Bluey indeed bullies their father. He acts like he hates it every time, but based on how Chilli escapes most of the time, they must really hate it. I don't remember Bluey called out for that, only rewarded.
Once you realize that 70% of the shows are basically “Dad distracts the kids after work so Mom can get dinner ready” or similar, it makes sense. Bandit lays down the law when he needs to, but most of the time he’s just playing.
You’ll notice that he’s much more concerned with how Bluey plays with Bingo than he is with how she plays with him. He’s big, he can take it.
Faceytime is a good example of “kid is naughty and gets in actual trouble”.
Great article. Insane that this kind of anti-social kid-numbing garbage production line is not only allowed to exist in our society but also very well rewarded. This is another symptom of our deeply sick world, in which financial success is completely decorrelated from having any kind of positive impact on the world.
Cocomelon just phones it in. Almost all of their songs have some similar catchy intro leading into the song. Sometimes the intro is the same across different songs. Recently, my kid got into the song "Bicycle Built for Two (Daisy Bell)". I grew up listening to Disney Children's Favorites sung by Larry Groce, who sings it expressively and dynamically. Cocomelon's interpretation is just flat and conservative, as if it's a chore to get through.
Bluey is much more wholesome than Miraculous. Not a judgement thing, my eldest watches Miraculous too and I don't really have a problem with it. It's just not on the same level as Bluey. A huge plus for parents is also that Bluey is WAY more engaging for adults. Far and away my favourite program to watch with my kids. Some episodes really pull at the heart strings.
Miraculous changes a lot in the later seasons. I'm saying this because while our kids were very much into the first 2 seasons, it was me and my wife who got hooked for the other 3 seasons.
The first 2 seasons are also full of fillers if you want, I don't shy away from skipping them when I'm alone, but we did watch it all with our kids.
We had a good time with it. Not sure if you watched it all, I'm looking forward the next season to see how the plot unravels.
But I'll definitely check Bluey :)
That being said, I wish there was a genre tagged as "engaging for adults, fun for kids": there are a bunch of movies and shows along these lines, but they aren't tagged in any other way.
Another genre that exists but I can't find is "boring for kids but child-friendly", basically any tv show that says stuff they can't properly follow, doesn't have action scenes, but has a convoluted plot for adults. On the top of my mind I can think of Shrinking (my kids still don't understand cursing in english, only italian, so this is great), but I remember there was an even better one that I can't think of right now.
Personally, I'm convinced Bluey is covertly a wholesome show for parents, dressed up as a kids' show, but ultimately still for the sake of children by way of 1) encouraging watching together, 2) improving parents' mental health and well-being, which has positive outcomes for their kids, 3) getting parents to be more engaged and imaginative.
It's truly, actually a family show, not just a show for kids that parents can tolerate enough to sit through.
Pretty much any episode that has the girls learning a lesson is also teaching a lesson to any of the parents watching. Or "adults," I should say -- I don't even have kids and I feel like a better person for having watched!
I feel no shame admitting that Sleepytime makes me cry without fail every time I see it.
I feel like most cartoon parents are either completely hapless morons (Papa Pig in Peppa Pig) or 100% perfect all the time robots (I love you Mr. and Mrs. Tiger but you're paragons, hard to relate to as parents). Bandit and Chili are incredible parents who also make mistakes and have real emotions and reactions to things. They absolutely make me want to be a better parent in a way that is actually achievable.
Bluey is next-level. S-tier television. It’s wholesome, calm, and entertaining. Episodes like Camping, Baby Race, Cricket, and Onesies are all emotional sucker-punches to the adults watching. (My pet theory, which my wife first suggested: Camping is essentially the Star Trek TNG episode Darmok.)
I moved across country and left all my friends behind at the age of 9, The Sign was a hard watch. I was those kids. I can still remember my reaction to being told we were moving (I would have been about 8).
Bluey is a certified work of perfection. My kids have stopped watching it now. I'm tempted to watch them all from the start by myself.
So many little things for parents. Your list is good. I was also struck by "early baby", for example, for subtext children will only get when they re-watch in 20 years.
I understand it's very ingrained in our culture at this point that this is a thing people do. But, if I decontextualize enough mentally, it starts to feel quite strange: manipulating one's brain into having a negative emotional reaction.
You’re not being well understood here, but I do this too, and have done — with everything — all my life.
The answer is ultimately that if you deconstruct and logically analyse any particular human activity it either ruins the fun and/or makes you realise how primitive and dark most forms of entertainment are. People like being emotional, for whatever reason.
I like the explanation that says it’s about learning, though. Learning somehow feels intrinsically good.
It might help to compare it with going to the gym or for a run. In some sense this produces an immediate negative reaction: our muscles get sore and stiff, and we get out of breath. But we still do it perhaps because we feel better afterwards, or because it helps our long term physical health.
Likewise, deliberately experiencing sad (or otherwise) emotional states has both short term and long term positive outcomes. In the short term we feel a sense of catharsis, and perhaps reassured that our feelings are relatable. In the long term we feel more in touch and less overwhelmed by our emotions.
It's not negative to be moved to tears. And it's not manipulative to watch a tv show. I don't think you're decontextualizing as much as you're trying to adopt some alien contrarian viewpoint.
Usually creative work and the arts are judged by their ability to move something inside of us to which you can say that crying is a proxy for that. It's effectively saying it's good art.
All emotional reactions are "manipulated" - we choose to expose ourselves to situations wherein we might feel emotional reactions of various sorts. Why is art, "negative" reactions or not, any different?
As another commenter points out, it's a good way of learning - about yourself, how you feel, about other perspectives. It's also, hopefully, a chance to grow - reflect on your past, your mistakes, how you've treated others.
I understand your question, and it is hard to describe. Our brains are pattern generators, and it "feels good" to resonate with patterns we've already experienced. Neural circuits create patterns by strengthening connections upon our experience. This is particularly true as we get older and our brains become less plastic. Lesser used patterns become harder to access as they are no longer reinforced as frequently. However, this feels less good for our brains, and we value novelty.
So in the same way that riding a bike after a long time is much harder than it is to ride one when you use it every day, you can generalize this to something like emotions. It is bad to only experience one type of feeling all the time, and variety is good. Having a controlled, relatable medium lead you to experience a less commonly-felt emotion feels good. I don't know if I can explain why--maybe we have mechanisms in our brain for encouraging this novelty--but this is likely why we seek out these emotional experiences.
I didn't believe "ugly crying" is about negativity. Rather, the "ugly" bit is about the abandonment with which one cries. One is so invested in the emotions (whatever those may be--it's not even a continuum of good/bad but rather a huge, high dimension vector space) that one abandons propriety and self-respect and just cries. It's about investment due to the exceedingly high emotional resonance with the subject matter.
This is my understanding. Caveat: I am not a person who cries much, if at all.
I lost my mom some years ago. It definitely just hit me, and I was kind of in an odd place in life at the time. I don't think I really processed it all well at the time.
Years later, when I watch a good movie that results in someone losing a parent figure, I'll often have quite a deep emotional reaction to it. But in the end I like these experiences. They help me look into those situations again and help me analyze the connection to losing my mom. Being in that state of emotion again helps me process it now that I'm in a very different stage in life.
Because art can be seen as manipulation, or it can be seen as tapping on the deeply fundamental hooks that make us human. Feeling affects from an artistic representation tells us something about the human experience that goes beyond our intellect. Its closer to something spiritual rather than something analytic.
Plus, it's not JUST about the crying. I'm order to get to the point where the tears are actually falling, you have to go through all the build up that makes you care very deeply about the characters and situation. When that works well enough to get you to cry over a cartoon? It's fucking MAGICAL. =)
It just means that you cry so hard your face is all twisted up and you go red and and your mouth is hanging open and there's snot dripping out of your nose, as opposed to simply shedding a couple tears. It's not really disparaging.
Bluey is easily the best children's TV. I mean I'd barely class it as children's TV; it's good by adult standards.
It's a bit annoying really because there isn't anything else like it at all. I would say the closest things are Pixar films which manage to appeal to adults and children. I'm not aware of any TV like that though. Apart from Bluey we're stuck with trash like Paw Patrol, Bing, Blippi, etc.
There are a small number that are not extremely annoying, but you still wouldn't actually want to watch them: Gabby's Dollhouse, Puffin Island, maybe Hey Duggee.
I would say Gravity Falls much more so than Phineas and Ferb. The latter doesn't have much of a series-long story arc, whereas the former very much does have one.
Craig of the Creek was also pretty good, though I don't think it has a wider arc (I am not entirely certain though.)
Phineas and Ferb was actually NOT written with kids directly in mind, and as a comfortable pop culture medium between the tame-over-time Simpsons and raunchier Family Guy and South Park. A mostly wholesome, wacky and chaotic series where the good guys always win and usually spectacularly. Phineas and Ferb never really learn anything but the other characters do.
I'm not sure there's ever been more options for good shows that a parent can watch and genuinely enjoy with their kids. Try Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Hilda, Sarah & Duck, Adventure Time, Miraculous, The Dragon Prince, MLP Friendship is Magic, She-Ra and the Princess of Power, Samurai Jack, Gravity Falls, Ducktales (the new one, but the old one isn't bad either), Cleopatra in Space, Amphibia, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Owl House, Craig of the Creek, Steven Universe, LEGO Elves, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Over the Garden Wall, Infinity Train, and the Disney Fairies movies.
I'd also recommend getting your hands on the cartoons you enjoyed as a kid. Odds are good your kids will like them for the same reasons you did, although you may find that they don't all hold up for you.
Some are for sure, but a lot of those shows hold up well for all ages. I don't put much faith in marketers to decide which shows are for what demographics. Better to see what lands for yourself. It helps when you're watching and discussing the shows with your kids too.
Some of them, Adventure time being a great example, can appeal to very young kids but they'll find new meaning in those episodes as they get older.
I think shows like Infinity Train, Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Steven Universe, and Samurai Jack will be better after a kid is old enough that Cocomelon wouldn't hold any appeal, but even at that age Sarah & Duck, Hilda, MLP, Craig of the Creek, etc could still be good. Just about anything that holds their attention and isn't Cocomelon is a huge win. If you'll enjoy it, all the better.
> I'd also recommend getting your hands on the cartoons you enjoyed as a kid.
I grew up with WB Loony Tunes (and Tex Avery and Superchicken and Wacky Racers and...), and that style of animation looks positively ancient in comparison to the modern animation style - whatever you call it - rendered as sort-of-3D. For example, Paw Patrol.
This actually worries me because I want my kid (currently 5yo) to have the benefit of the utter anarchy of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Roadrunner.
Put on some Loony Toons! Don't worry that it's old. Kids that young don't have enough sense of the timeline to know just how ancient any animation style is, but Loony Toons will stand out for sure. 3D garbage-tier animation is everywhere in kids shows because it's fast and cheap. 3D animation is often much less expressive and dynamic though. The more variety in animation you expose a kid too, the sooner they'll be able to notice bad animation when they see it.
In my limited sample size, the new Roadrunner 3D cartoons get significantly fewer laughs than the hand drawn ones. The style is irrelevant to the humour, however there does seem to be a correlation between quantity of TNT and enjoyment - new ones have none.
PBS Kids has excellent shows for little kids and is free. There is a website, Apple TV app, etc. I’m surprised by how little it seems to be known compared to commercial options like Netflix or Nick Jr.
Old episodes of Blues Clues are also great for little kids.
I’d say Miraculous is very French, in a good way. In that it doesn’t try to shield children from difficult adult subjects like death and grief and difficult parental relationships. We only do an hour or two of screen time a week right now (including for me and my wife), but Miraculous was a request for last week’s “movie night”.
Then we watch Severance when the kids go to bed and that’s it. Just like there’s junk shows for kids we’ve got junk shows for adults, and it’s hard to deny it to children when we don’t deny it for ourselves. The kids complain way less too when we’re like “well we’re all giving this stuff up”, because they have an innate sense of fairness.
why bluey or cocomelon? mister rogers is chronically untalked about for kids content in 2025.
its an incredible show and deeply enriching for both me and my little one. we’ve given our two year old very limited screen time with mister rogers and, since, they’ve taken up great fondness to making believe, we talk about characters and situations on the show regularly, and they naturally separate themselves from the screen after a while.
I’ve been very strict about exposure and screen time but mister rogers has been a blessing and provided me great relief for an hour a day.
The jazz aspect of the show
completely flew over my head when i was a child but it’s brilliance shines now that i listen as an adult. No two shows are played the same. Costa and his band are constantly riffing. The show is honestly a f-ing incredible work of art.
Daniel Tiger (Mr Rogers spinoff/remake/???) is really quite good as well. They did well at preserving the idea of the original in a very different format.
I think the author chose these two shows as a comparison because they were created in roughly the same time period, so they're more directly comparable. Mister Rogers was created in a different era, with different media environment, funding and monetization strategy, and functionally in a different medium.
My wife and I have a daughter in the demographic of these shows, though she's a little young for Bluey. There's a YouTube (and now Netflix) show called Ms. Rachel for a younger audience that I'd put in the same positive category as Bluey.
We probably watch one or two hours of Ms. Rachel videos a day with our daughter. We've got several family friends with a household rule of "no screens at all for kids" who would scoff at that but their rule seems both draconian and technophobic to me. Our daughter has picked up many words and concepts from the show and we've learned a lot of the songs as a family and sing them when the context comes up (ex: "baby put your pants on..."). Ms. Rachel has been a hugely positive parenting tool for us.
Every once in a while, though, YouTube will try to autoplay some Cocomelon after a Ms. Rachel video and wow it's just absolute garbage. I think this article captures it well: it feels like slop engineered to keep young eyeballs glued to the screen with no higher purpose than increasing the number of engaged minutes.
Instead of "no screens," the more granular "you can choose from this menu of approved content on your screen for a reasonable amount of time per day" is the better parenting move for our family.
Our son has profound hearing loss and he wears Cochlear implants, and I remember very fondly the time we were hooked on Ms Rachel.
She is great and lots of her videos are a blessing for parents with children with hearing impairment as she uses lots of techniques that our Speech and Language therapist used to teach us.
And signing! I've noticed she signs along with most of what she says. I think it's an inclusivity thing, but it also meant that our daughter could communicate simple ideas long before she could talk.
I don’t have kids yet, but 100% agree with your last paragraph. Controlled, carefully selected content is much much better than no screens approach. When picked carefully, those shows are actually educational, helping with growth.
The show’s popularity has led to some people buying Blue Heelers as a pet for their kids… which will probably backfire because they aren’t meant to be house dogs
(Blue Heelers need an insane amount of exercise and can be pretty aggressive)
Heelers will demand four hours of an aerodynamic throwing stick tossed the length of a football field and back and then want a 5km run to the beach to cool down.
Failure to deliver can result in the destruction of everything you love.
My 3 legged heeler can still run laps around me. But if you can keep them busy, they are very loyal and can understand a crazy amount of words/signs. My previous heeler went deaf and still obeyed perfectly by watching signs and body language. Incredible dogs.
Yeah, owned one for 12 years and she was potentially nippy to anyone she didn't know from puppyhood. Was ball-obsessed, broke a lot of stuff and hated anyone wearing hi-vis.
Her destructiveness though was nothing on a German Shepherd.
I found Ezra Klein's chat with Jia Tolentino about Cocomelon and Bluey ... and parenting, zen, hallucinogens, attention and more ... one of the most deeply interesting things I have heard in the last year.
I think it's made for both, which creates a fantastic opportunity to join your kids on the couch and genuinely enjoy what they are enjoying. Kids love Bluey, but they love watching their parents love Bluey.
The Rain episode is pretty cool too. It has almost no words apart from the goodbye at start. The good thing about bluey is that it teaches kids to do mischievous things and gives you ideas to do fun activities with kids.
this is the one where my wife came in while I was watching Bluey in the morning with the kids and she's like hey did something happen you're crying a lot
Blueys great, my kid loses his shit when the shows on. Its also interesting seeing a female character marketed to kids as a segment rather than just young girls which isnt that common.
My son is still under 2, so he prefers other low intensity shows like Mini Kids and Night Garden. The way he gets into Mini Kids is insane, I havent seen cocomelon but I am betting he would get drawn too far into that. Mini Kids sounds like the antidote to cocomelon, no fast cuts, slow music, and mostly just toddlers interacting with toys and each other on television.
Childrens shows absolutely. But if I go to the kids clothing aisle at the shops, they aren't selling my son Peppa Pig shirts or Veda the Vet shoes. Its sonic/mario/dinosaurs/cars and bluey at the moment.
Other than cuts every 2-3 seconds to keep engaged in Cocomelon, also notice that CAMERA NEVER STOPS, ever. Every scene you see it's moving. It could be a slight movement or exaggerated one, but it's never stationary.
I like Bluey but couldn't get my young one to sit through it for a nebulizer. Cocomelon did the trick and I'm very thankful for them for that. Honestly, I don't think it's as garbage as everyone makes it out to be. It's hard trying to find video-form nursery rhymes that aren't weird out there. They have that done well. I really like Bluey but I feel like it's for a much older crowd.
Bluey is excellence, but I’ve always said Bluey is a kids show for parents.
It’s representation of how the parents behave around, and communicate with, their kids, and the numerous examples of ideas for how to play with your children make the show invaluable to parents.
The fact that kids love it too only reinforces its clever brilliance.
It’s designed by a parent, specifically a dad, and it shows in so many subtle ways.
The way each episode tells you the name of the episode, for example. My kids can name the episode they want by name, which I can search. For other shows, you get a toddler’s description that can itself be a puzzle to interpret.
They’re also short enough that they don’t have to add filler.
While I agree to an extent, I also just think it's also documenting life as we all know it as both parents and children. Albeit in it's own clever storytelling and excellent animation way. The fact this is somewhat novel should probably be odd, but just points to the fact that adults have been "creating children shows" instead of just showing them what childhood looks like, stuff they can relate with, stuff parents can related with, it's all relatable because it's so - real. It's basically animated reality TV in a way and we all know how novel that seemed when it started.
When I learned that some of my favorite TV shows of my childhood were only made to sell toys, it was kind of shattering, but then I see it in everything now. Paw Patrol find a dinosaur land - aka - you need to buy your kid 8 new vehicles and the new dino characters, up next, Paw Patrol goes to space! Adults making TV shows always have a weird ulterior motive and the programming tends to reflect it.
It took me awhile to realize but the intro song is also a game you can play with your kids. They're basically doing musical chairs. Then like you mentioned virtually every episode is a non-screen-time game you can play with your kids. Very clever.
I’ve never let my kids watch cocomelon (or much screen time at all).
But we do listen to cocomelon. It has some legitimately well done music IMO. For example “over the river and through the woods”.
I've been in the bluey house. It is approximately 8600ft (800m sq). The work-life balance that the family has doesn't seem particularly odd when it comes to Australian households.
They even make a joke about this in the Ghostbasket episode. Bandit is pretending to be a realtor and Chilli remarks that the house is a bit small, to which he replies "it's bigger on the inside"
I think you need to look at it as parents spending 8-10 minute periods of time with their kids. In fact there is an episode where the Dad has to go to work and he spends a short amount of time playing with them before he has to go.
I don’t understand the negative talk about Cocomelon. Kids learn a lot through songs. Cocomelon is full of songs. My son enjoys singing many of them. I’m happy with this.
"I won’t pretend like I haven’t stuck an iPad in front of my son and let him watch Cocomelon or Blippi so I could get some work done. Guilty as charged.„
I gave that a test viewing when my child was at that show's age bracket, but I instantly hated it. Over the top slapstick humour, where destroying someone else's things is seen as OK. Not Cocomelon bad, but nothing much to redeem it either.
I've noticed that the best shows usually have two layers, allowing two otherwise incompatible audiences to share the same experience. This is also why old South Park episodes were so fun: it was fart and poop jokes, but it was also some societal commentary.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 245 ms ] threadIf you want children shows that are actually educational and fun, I usually recommend PBS Kids.
Also Bluey indeed bullies their father. He acts like he hates it every time, but based on how Chilli escapes most of the time, they must really hate it. I don't remember Bluey called out for that, only rewarded.
You’ll notice that he’s much more concerned with how Bluey plays with Bingo than he is with how she plays with him. He’s big, he can take it.
Faceytime is a good example of “kid is naughty and gets in actual trouble”.
And then there is the Backpackers episode where Bingo takes her turn and punches him repeatedly.
I need to check Bluey, we watched Miraculous, tales of Ladybug with our kids and enjoyed it (the plot is for adults).
There is a whole bunch of "junk food" in both tv and videogames (those were you win no matter what). I'm hoping things get better.
We had a good time with it. Not sure if you watched it all, I'm looking forward the next season to see how the plot unravels.
But I'll definitely check Bluey :)
That being said, I wish there was a genre tagged as "engaging for adults, fun for kids": there are a bunch of movies and shows along these lines, but they aren't tagged in any other way.
Another genre that exists but I can't find is "boring for kids but child-friendly", basically any tv show that says stuff they can't properly follow, doesn't have action scenes, but has a convoluted plot for adults. On the top of my mind I can think of Shrinking (my kids still don't understand cursing in english, only italian, so this is great), but I remember there was an even better one that I can't think of right now.
Rocky & Bullwinkle was here. Loaded with adult-friendly puns and hommages.
Pretty much any episode that has the girls learning a lesson is also teaching a lesson to any of the parents watching. Or "adults," I should say -- I don't even have kids and I feel like a better person for having watched!
I feel like most cartoon parents are either completely hapless morons (Papa Pig in Peppa Pig) or 100% perfect all the time robots (I love you Mr. and Mrs. Tiger but you're paragons, hard to relate to as parents). Bandit and Chili are incredible parents who also make mistakes and have real emotions and reactions to things. They absolutely make me want to be a better parent in a way that is actually achievable.
Bluey is a certified work of perfection. My kids have stopped watching it now. I'm tempted to watch them all from the start by myself.
If you hate Cocomelon like me, you’ll love Bluey. It’s like the polar opposite of it.
I understand it's very ingrained in our culture at this point that this is a thing people do. But, if I decontextualize enough mentally, it starts to feel quite strange: manipulating one's brain into having a negative emotional reaction.
The answer is ultimately that if you deconstruct and logically analyse any particular human activity it either ruins the fun and/or makes you realise how primitive and dark most forms of entertainment are. People like being emotional, for whatever reason.
I like the explanation that says it’s about learning, though. Learning somehow feels intrinsically good.
Likewise, deliberately experiencing sad (or otherwise) emotional states has both short term and long term positive outcomes. In the short term we feel a sense of catharsis, and perhaps reassured that our feelings are relatable. In the long term we feel more in touch and less overwhelmed by our emotions.
Why do we want to synthetically manipulate our brains into an emotional reaction, especially in the case of a negative emotion?
Also ugly crying is not always a negative reaction. It's empathy which is important to our survival (and also wonderful).
As another commenter points out, it's a good way of learning - about yourself, how you feel, about other perspectives. It's also, hopefully, a chance to grow - reflect on your past, your mistakes, how you've treated others.
crying is absolutely not limited to “a negative emotion.”
if you’re struggling to imagine a crying situation that isn’t negative, i would heavily encourage you to indulge in more art.
So in the same way that riding a bike after a long time is much harder than it is to ride one when you use it every day, you can generalize this to something like emotions. It is bad to only experience one type of feeling all the time, and variety is good. Having a controlled, relatable medium lead you to experience a less commonly-felt emotion feels good. I don't know if I can explain why--maybe we have mechanisms in our brain for encouraging this novelty--but this is likely why we seek out these emotional experiences.
This is my understanding. Caveat: I am not a person who cries much, if at all.
Years later, when I watch a good movie that results in someone losing a parent figure, I'll often have quite a deep emotional reaction to it. But in the end I like these experiences. They help me look into those situations again and help me analyze the connection to losing my mom. Being in that state of emotion again helps me process it now that I'm in a very different stage in life.
https://www.britannica.com/art/catharsis-criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1965_num_43_1_2556
Plus, it's not JUST about the crying. I'm order to get to the point where the tears are actually falling, you have to go through all the build up that makes you care very deeply about the characters and situation. When that works well enough to get you to cry over a cartoon? It's fucking MAGICAL. =)
It's a bit annoying really because there isn't anything else like it at all. I would say the closest things are Pixar films which manage to appeal to adults and children. I'm not aware of any TV like that though. Apart from Bluey we're stuck with trash like Paw Patrol, Bing, Blippi, etc.
There are a small number that are not extremely annoying, but you still wouldn't actually want to watch them: Gabby's Dollhouse, Puffin Island, maybe Hey Duggee.
Craig of the Creek was also pretty good, though I don't think it has a wider arc (I am not entirely certain though.)
I'd also recommend getting your hands on the cartoons you enjoyed as a kid. Odds are good your kids will like them for the same reasons you did, although you may find that they don't all hold up for you.
Some of them, Adventure time being a great example, can appeal to very young kids but they'll find new meaning in those episodes as they get older.
I think shows like Infinity Train, Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Steven Universe, and Samurai Jack will be better after a kid is old enough that Cocomelon wouldn't hold any appeal, but even at that age Sarah & Duck, Hilda, MLP, Craig of the Creek, etc could still be good. Just about anything that holds their attention and isn't Cocomelon is a huge win. If you'll enjoy it, all the better.
I grew up with WB Loony Tunes (and Tex Avery and Superchicken and Wacky Racers and...), and that style of animation looks positively ancient in comparison to the modern animation style - whatever you call it - rendered as sort-of-3D. For example, Paw Patrol.
This actually worries me because I want my kid (currently 5yo) to have the benefit of the utter anarchy of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Roadrunner.
Old episodes of Blues Clues are also great for little kids.
Then we watch Severance when the kids go to bed and that’s it. Just like there’s junk shows for kids we’ve got junk shows for adults, and it’s hard to deny it to children when we don’t deny it for ourselves. The kids complain way less too when we’re like “well we’re all giving this stuff up”, because they have an innate sense of fairness.
its an incredible show and deeply enriching for both me and my little one. we’ve given our two year old very limited screen time with mister rogers and, since, they’ve taken up great fondness to making believe, we talk about characters and situations on the show regularly, and they naturally separate themselves from the screen after a while.
I’ve been very strict about exposure and screen time but mister rogers has been a blessing and provided me great relief for an hour a day.
The jazz aspect of the show completely flew over my head when i was a child but it’s brilliance shines now that i listen as an adult. No two shows are played the same. Costa and his band are constantly riffing. The show is honestly a f-ing incredible work of art.
And he had a specific use of language that was incredibly deep and mindful unlike Daniel Tiger.
We probably watch one or two hours of Ms. Rachel videos a day with our daughter. We've got several family friends with a household rule of "no screens at all for kids" who would scoff at that but their rule seems both draconian and technophobic to me. Our daughter has picked up many words and concepts from the show and we've learned a lot of the songs as a family and sing them when the context comes up (ex: "baby put your pants on..."). Ms. Rachel has been a hugely positive parenting tool for us.
Every once in a while, though, YouTube will try to autoplay some Cocomelon after a Ms. Rachel video and wow it's just absolute garbage. I think this article captures it well: it feels like slop engineered to keep young eyeballs glued to the screen with no higher purpose than increasing the number of engaged minutes.
Instead of "no screens," the more granular "you can choose from this menu of approved content on your screen for a reasonable amount of time per day" is the better parenting move for our family.
She is great and lots of her videos are a blessing for parents with children with hearing impairment as she uses lots of techniques that our Speech and Language therapist used to teach us.
It's pretty wild to be how young babies can start signing compared to speech development.
Failure to deliver can result in the destruction of everything you love.
Her destructiveness though was nothing on a German Shepherd.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
It's available "where you get your podcasts" (though might be old enough now to not be after the NYT added a paywall for old audio material)
https://www.bluey.tv/watch/season-3/rain/
My son is still under 2, so he prefers other low intensity shows like Mini Kids and Night Garden. The way he gets into Mini Kids is insane, I havent seen cocomelon but I am betting he would get drawn too far into that. Mini Kids sounds like the antidote to cocomelon, no fast cuts, slow music, and mostly just toddlers interacting with toys and each other on television.
They’re also short episodes so they don’t feel too involved.
That's most children's shows these days. Male protagonists are getting harder to find.
I want to be clear that I'm not blaming you, you needed a tool to get your child to sit still for an important reason, and I've done the same.
It’s representation of how the parents behave around, and communicate with, their kids, and the numerous examples of ideas for how to play with your children make the show invaluable to parents.
The fact that kids love it too only reinforces its clever brilliance.
The way each episode tells you the name of the episode, for example. My kids can name the episode they want by name, which I can search. For other shows, you get a toddler’s description that can itself be a puzzle to interpret.
They’re also short enough that they don’t have to add filler.
"This episode of Bingo is called Bingo."
When I learned that some of my favorite TV shows of my childhood were only made to sell toys, it was kind of shattering, but then I see it in everything now. Paw Patrol find a dinosaur land - aka - you need to buy your kid 8 new vehicles and the new dino characters, up next, Paw Patrol goes to space! Adults making TV shows always have a weird ulterior motive and the programming tends to reflect it.
Especially the albums Here come the 1, 2, 3s and Here Comes Science.
My wife and I really enjoyed Caspar Baby Pants and Laurie Berkner for kids music.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL86-PnO8H7d9uS59c0f6-...
I think it is influenced by the Flintstones, a little bit.
At one point you could stay in it on air bnb. I think it's been remodelled to a family home since that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV7JPC2FuNs
The upstairs hallway is sometimes a normal short one, and other times is long enough to land a space shuttle.
And I don't mean just the OST (there are 3 albums), Bluey can also serve to introduction your kids to a wide range of classical music.
https://blueypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Classical_Music_in_Bluey
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3lXnsxg2AOj6QASadNBYcN (Spotify's Bluey classical music playlist.