Audiovisual
Dutch loooooves TV. She watched very little in her first year of life (ummm... not counting all the movies we watched while holding her when she was very very small), but now she watches maybe an hour or two a week. So far, she's watched The Snowman, Babe, The Tigger Movie, all the Wallace and Gromit movies, Chicken Run, Finding Nemo, some Baby Einstein, some Sesame Street, The General, My Neighbor Totoro... and lots more. This weekend, she sat raptly through about 2/3rds of Singin' in the Rain, after which Cook found her dancing in her bedroom. I'm totally biased about her TV consumption - I feel like it's okay as long as it's something I like (My Neighbor Totoro, for example, which is a fabulous movie, and has the added attraction of being cool and arty), but I'm pretty sure The Tigger Movie is melting her brain (since I can't watch more than 2 minutes at a time without feeling an urge to put an icepack to my head). We have frequent YouTube sessions, too, that inevitably degenerate into Dutch demanding to watch some kind of bizarro scenario - "I want to see a hippo and a rhino iceskating!" - and us being startled to find something very close to what she was looking for (though, okay, not with the hippo and rhino thing, though I did find a video of a crocodile eating a zebra, which I really don't recommend for toddlers). We found the Belgian farting pig during one of these sessions, though I can't remember the exact search terms that landed us there. There are some wonderful things on YouTube, though Dutch's appreciation seems to be kind of eccentric, since this is her favorite video, and is requested at least five times a week.
But really, as long as whatever she watches doesn't have commercials and isn't hideously violent or offensive, AND as long as we don't let her watch more than a few hours a week, I've decided to give us a free pass. She does learn about some weird stuff that she'd never get, otherwise - parkour and doubledutch, Japanese home life, fish behavior, types of cheese, the brevity of life. It's such a lovely break - an hour of no whining, no screaming, no arguments, no nothing. Just one small child staring blankly at the boob tube, melting her brain... while I make dinner, or lie on the couch blissfully staring blankly at the ceiling. I know how the AAP feels about it, and I'm sure she'd be better off, brainwise, if she watched no TV at all. But without that guaranteed distraction every once in a while, I'd probably kill her, and then the AAP would definitely be upset.
Anyway, I'd like to take a tangential moment to celebrate the late, great Donald O'Connor, Gene Kelly's sidekick in Singin' in the Rain (one of my all-time favorite movies). I appreciate him more every time I watch that movie, and I always have to dance around my bedroom after I watch it, too. Dutch and I will have to make a date to watch a Francis the Talking Mule movie sometime soon...
But really, as long as whatever she watches doesn't have commercials and isn't hideously violent or offensive, AND as long as we don't let her watch more than a few hours a week, I've decided to give us a free pass. She does learn about some weird stuff that she'd never get, otherwise - parkour and doubledutch, Japanese home life, fish behavior, types of cheese, the brevity of life. It's such a lovely break - an hour of no whining, no screaming, no arguments, no nothing. Just one small child staring blankly at the boob tube, melting her brain... while I make dinner, or lie on the couch blissfully staring blankly at the ceiling. I know how the AAP feels about it, and I'm sure she'd be better off, brainwise, if she watched no TV at all. But without that guaranteed distraction every once in a while, I'd probably kill her, and then the AAP would definitely be upset.
Anyway, I'd like to take a tangential moment to celebrate the late, great Donald O'Connor, Gene Kelly's sidekick in Singin' in the Rain (one of my all-time favorite movies). I appreciate him more every time I watch that movie, and I always have to dance around my bedroom after I watch it, too. Dutch and I will have to make a date to watch a Francis the Talking Mule movie sometime soon...
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