A look at the creative process behind Bluey and Cocomelon (2024)

Only after calling her name three times and considerably raising my voice I got her attention again.

The show that was on was... the cooking channel! So the bar for television completely absorbing a child's attention seems quite low :-)

Daniel Tiger is one of the very, very few TV shows we let our daughter watch, and it teaches emotional regulation so incredibly well and has plenty of tunes that I've caught her singing to herself, such as "it's okay to feel sad sometimes, little by little, you'll feel better again"

I'm in Australia and never grew up watching Mr Rogers, but after seeing the "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" movie I recognised the tunes and then spent an inordinate amount of time looking into the origins.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tiger%27s_Neighborhood

There's a definitely a big gulf between the Mr Rogers / Daniel Tiger / Bluey energy and almost every other show. It's crazy now noticeable it is. Even modern Sesame Street is much more frenetic and lively than old episodes from the 80s and 90s. Which is not to say it's empty junk food like Cocomelon, it's just that those shows have raised the required addictiveness bar overall.

[0] https://www.misterrogers.org/

Before he was born I put a lot of thought into what he would watch before he was born assuming it would be a huge necessity to address. I torrented Mr Rodgers and Reading Rainbow and Eureka (amazing old science cartoon if anyone's encountered it) and I even started writing a script that would randomly select from these and automatically turn off after 1-3 episodes.

Basically I am shocked at how wrong I was. He had no natural interest in TV beyond a few minutes, even if we were watching something. We didn't have a reason to push it, when he did see newer kids media like Bluey / Cocomelon etc he would zombie out exactly as you described and then have noticeably crappier behavior for a while after we would have to have a minor battle to turn it off. Felt like microwaving his brain and we had no reason to push it on him so we didn't. After a few days he would never miss it. We let him watch stuff at friend's houses and still pop on old stuff that I downloaded once every week or two. Same basic behavior / problems. We always back off for the same reasons.

I grew up on TV and I don't judge parents who legitimately love watching TV with their kids or need it as a babysitter because of demanding schedules or absent child care assistance. It is an incredible tool in a culture that often separates extended families and discourages grandparents from playing active daily supportive roles.

But yeah for whatever reason our kid started reading independently when he was two, got really interested in languages, got his basic operators down while he was 2-3 and has never had any serious behavioral or developmental problems and other parents are always asking us what we did to accelerate his development and make him such a genius.

We didn't do anything unnatural, we just didn't intentionally push him to watch a lot of TV. He still watches stuff, we still watch stuff. It's just on a laptop and ends when he starts turning into a zombie.

With that said Bluey seems fine to me, my kids the one with the weird zombie reaction. And disclaimers all kids are different, I'm incredibly lucky to work from home on a schedule where I get to hang out with him all the time and I'm pretty sure regardless of zombie Cocomelon watching his generations problems are not going to be rooted in them zonking out on TV but who knows.

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.

If you hate Cocomelon like me, you’ll love Bluey. It’s like the polar opposite of it.

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.

At six my son currently has one Bluey episode (in English, simply to emerse him in another language he will pick up in any case later on) and one Shaun the Sheep after school (that's a combined twenty minutes or so). Shaun hits the exact spot in terms of humour for six year olds, and is brilliant with none of the characters actually speaking.

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.

https://www.bluey.tv/watch/season-3/rain/

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.

The episode referenced in the article ("Whale Watching" about the parents being hungover) is another that, while not my favourite or anything, is certainly one of those experiences you probably have as a parent that nobody's really talking about or making media about. Bluey's managing to be entertaining and wholesome for kids while hitting on a mostly untapped niche of "relatable parenting experiences".

With how much "junk food" TV is out there, Bluey's a real gem. For kids and parents alike.

Her destructiveness though was nothing on a German Shepherd.

I had the same experience. I'm tearing up a little in the office thinking about a cartoon for toddlers! Incredible.

I think the greatest social failure of that day isn't that he walked, it's that half the country didn't have the self-awareness to take stock - to understand both the legal and social system that we'd set up that lead to that outcome, to see how we'd been manipulated by the media - and to maybe have the grace to let it go. (The last time someone brought it up to me, in person, was a scant 3 years ago, in a context so ridiculous that I don't know that I should relate it.)

The upstairs hallway is sometimes a normal short one, and other times is long enough to land a space shuttle.

The last episode is great on an almost Pixar level - there’s three separate stories happening and kids will only really pick up on one and a half.

So while I idolise the show, I also sit around trying to identify the families net worth, which is likely quite a lot.

Its sad that we get this amazing tv show but the lifestyle in the show (having a huge brisbane adjacent queenslander with a lovely tree in the backyard and hours and hours of free time to spend with your kids) is out of reach for so many.

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.

Especially the albums Here come the 1, 2, 3s and Here Comes Science.

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.

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.

If you want children shows that are actually educational and fun, I usually recommend PBS Kids.