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Comment by heleph | Hacker News Reader

I've been watching the original Thomas the tank engine with my son and was a bit surprised to notice the theme around obeying the Fat Controller's authority.

He is a mostly benevolent authority figure who helps the engines out of their scrapes, but engines that defy him or disturb the peace are punished. In an early episode he left an engine bricked up in a tunnel. Quite a few engines have also been sent away as well.

It is slightly funny to see childhood again through adult eyes but I'm not sure what I'll do when my son is old enough to understand these things. Im sure the idea of being left alone in a tunnel would have terrified me as a child. :)

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My daughter loves Caillou, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caillou, which is a fairly educational show focused on social relationships and the challenges that young kids run into. Overall it is actually pretty good and doesn't have strange authority figures. But Caillou is a whiner who has tantrums, and my daughter now whines and has tantrums almost exactly like Caillou. I'm pretty sure she learned it from the show.

So all these shows have consequences, even the good ones. I'm not sure what is worse, whining and tantrums or deference to authority figures?

PS. I'm not the only one who thinks Caillou is a whiner: http://google.com/#q=caillou+whiner

Interesting, we have also noticed that our daughter is now saying the resigned "Well Ok" with a sigh (or whatever the English translation is) as the eponymous character. I had not noticed the link to the tantrums though...

Caillou is pretty much the worst children's show I have ever seen, the hate is not undeserved. He constantly whines and has tantrums and his parents always give in, just teaches children to be insufferable to get your way.

We forbid our children from watching Caillou. We explain to them that the way he behaves is not acceptable or allowed in our home. We don't want them to think Caillou's behavior is okay. They self-police now.

Without choosing sides, I think it's pretty clear that Caillou's creators are presenting an approach to parenting that involves encouraging kids to emote. Which is often not a lot of fun to be around, of course, but the opposite approach could amount to telling kids to shut up because you don't want to know how they feel. My suspicion is that kids will self-limit eventually, as part of developmental growth, and that worrying too much about either extreme is probably pointless. My gripe is that Caillou's pacing is so vague and dreamy that essentially almost nothing happens in an entire episode.

Interesting. I didn't know that "encouraging kids to emote" is a thing, but I guess it could be.

I never knew kids had trouble emoting. Emoting is all that the ones I know do.

The highest praise one can receive in that world is to be described as "really useful."

To the Controllers.

The stories were written by some christian minister or other and it seems he was fairly authoritarian.

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