![]() ![]() The “good” books I read mostly involved warrior mice who were probably also colonialists. I spent most of my preteen years reading horny fantasy books by Piers Anthony and the science fiction of L. Life is long and full of different stimuli. What effect do all these television shows have on the developing brain of a 4-year-old? I don’t honestly know, but I try not to worry too much about it. I have not yet talked to her about how the Vegimals are portrayed as infantile, loyal beings who love to bake kelp cakes all day, but I plan on doing so soon. The Vegimals’ oppression does not register with my daughter, who has watched every “Octonauts” episode multiple times, owns a small fortune in toy GUPs and goes to her preschool dressed in a sweater with Kwaazi, an incorrigible pirate cat, knit across the front. What’s left unsaid, but certainly seems clear enough to me, is that the Octonauts have colonized the Vegimals, a species of squeaking underwater creatures who all resemble one sort of vegetable or another. They help whales and eels and flamingos in need. ![]() Her stony silence then prompts me to try to think of a show that’s not dumb, which is an impossible task - because what kids’ programming isn’t dumb?įor the last two years, her favorite show has been “Octonauts,” about a diverse band of animals who explore the oceans and swamplands in vessels called GUPs. These moments of protest usually come, it should be noted, when I’m sitting beside her, staring at my own phone, scrolling through Twitter. This seems absurd to me, but as the father of a 4-year-old, I have not been immune to screen-time shaming - it upsets me to see my child watching a vapid show like “Paw Patrol” on our iPad. ![]() So many of us have come to believe that if our children spend more than a certain amount of time staring at a screen, whether television, phone or iPad, they will succumb to some capitalist plot to turn them all into little consumption monsters with insatiable appetites for toys, sugar, more screen time. Over the protests of my fellow concerned parents, I want to admit something: I don’t care all that much about screen time, the great child-rearing panic of the 21st century. ![]()
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