Also, why?
Banned shows:
- Paw Patrol - Seems soulless, I haven’t watched much, but there seems something very wrong about it. Intuitively, I feel like my kid shouldn’t watch it (though, I can could be convinced I’m wrong, if I am)
- Cocomelon - objectively soulless - don’t try to convince me that this show is anything but toddler crack.
Approved:
- Sesame Street
- Bluey
Both of the above shows seem to me like they are made with care and have the best interests to teaching children good morals and language skills.
My kids are older now but when they were young they liked:
Puffin Rock (Netflix in the US) - wholesome, family looking out for each other
Sarah and Duck (Amazon) - super low conflict, cute, very mild
Octonauts (Netflix I think?) - science-y adventure
We tried to get them into various PBS shows also. Daniel Tiger was okay, but now Bluey puts it to shame. They liked Dora for a while. We liked Molly of Denali but my husband is from Alaska so he had a soft spot for it. The older PBS shows are extremely formulaic which is attractive for a toddler but not for the parents.
We didn’t get Paw Patrol but it was kind of the forbidden fruit because of that, and whenever we were on vacation and the tv had cable, they wanted to watch it. But they also realized pretty fast that it was kind of boring. We stayed away from Peppa and Calliou because of what I’d read on Reddit.
This makes it sound like my kids watched a lot of tv! Probably too much to be honest but not as much as I’m making it sound.
My kids are much older now, but we always supported them watching Dinosaur Train, in which the clearly independently wealthy Pteranodon family with their adopted son (a t-rex) go on a mysteriously large number of vacations via a maybe-magical train to visit other dinosaurs in various climates and time periods.
We also liked PBS’s Word Girl, which mixes superpowers and grammar with kind of a Rocky and Bullwinkle style humor.
We loathed Octonauts and especially Littlest Pet Shop, both of which, sadly, my kids really enjoyed.
Dinosaur Train is an objectively great show and the music in it SLAPS