There are two Doras in the boys' lives: their yaya, AnDORA (spelled with two r's, actually, like the country between France and Spain), and Dora the Explorer, a cartoon character on Nickelodeon, the children's TV channel.
Dora is a Spanish-speaking child who goes off on various adventures with her trusty monkey, Boots and her talking backpack ("Backpack"), all guided by a talking Map. She's a great character: she teaches directions (that's where Map comes in), Spanish ("Come on, vamanos! Everybody let's go..."), compassion for animals, counting, and not to fear adventure, ants, heights, crocodiles or trolls.
I'm not as bothered now that the two boys may be identifying with a female character; gender confusion probably isn't a factor at ages 4 and 2. Besides which the boys now see themselves more in the mold of Dora's cousin, Diego. Nickelodeon seems to have realized that they need an equally compelling male character and seem to have been expanding Diego's role of late.
So yeah I've encouraged the Dora references: bought them Dora/Diego Mega Blok playsets to put together, and we're on about the millionth rotation of their five Dora DVDs, "Pirate Adventure" being the runaway favorite. Baz has memorized the chapters he likes, and with usual Baz aplomb uses the remote to jump to them.
Hearing the Dora music in the background sure grows on you, and I must say it's got some pretty catchy music. Now I understand why Hadrien likes singing, "Embruje, embruje" whenever he pushes Baz around.
Of course there'll be people out there who'll argue about the evils of putting kids in front of a TV. But I think TV's inevitable - I'd rather regulate consumption than prohibit it. As it is, the two boys are getting about 2 hours of Dora a day.
Would you rather it was Barney the Purple Dinosaur?
5 comments:
nice to see you posting 'daddy"
hehehe.
our kid is into Elmo (" 'Mo! ") and Thomas. my preference is that it would stay that way. No purple dinosaurs please. Or characters with tvs on their tummys.
ok. maybe a little bit of dexter later on.
How 'bout some Disney preschool??
Mai
Hi Mai, thanks for posting!
I would encourage Disney preschool but our cable provider doesn't have Disney Playhouse - all they have is the basic Disney channel which mostly contains teen and tween shows.
They love Nemo though! How about that? Baz is Nemo, Hadrien has been assigned Marlin (or "Marine", as Baz says), I'm Bruce the Shark, and Malou is Bloat.
Nemo's Disney, yeah?
Yeah, yeah. But seriously, our preschool shows are good! You should write to your cable operator. And if it's SkyCable - which I reckon it is given your proximity to their head office - then you have access to Playhouse Disney but need to pay extra.
But it is worth the money Raf. Seriously. Would I recommend something for my godson if I wasn't sure about it?
Ninang Mai
Ironically enough, we're right across the street from the SkyCable Head Office but apparently we're not wired for their Platinum package, which carries Playhouse Disney! Go figure.
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