Cosmic Questions

So when one is hovering on the edge of insanity, one should not be left alone to watch preschool television as one starts asking questions that are better left not asked.  What I take comfort in right now is that I could sit down with just about any group of mothers of preschool aged children and they will all have the same ponderings that I have.  Most of the time we are too busy to really notice or pay attention to these programs that give us a few stolen moments alone in the bathroom or 20 minutes to lose ourselves on the internet.  What I have noticed is that children go through these phases where they insist that we sit and watch this nonsense with them…not that there is anything wrong with preschool television, I am quite fond of Nick Jr.  As a matter of fact it was the reason that we dropped Directv and went to FIOS instead…there was about a day and a half of chaos in my home when Nick Jr wasn’t being shown on Directv. 

Anyway, most of the shows I love!  They are adorable and teach kids a lot, far more than I can teach when I have a house to clean and other things to care for.  There are even some I love to sit down and watch with the kids because I find them entertaining as well.  But there are some that I am left wondering why my preschooler is being forced to watch…like Dino Dan.  I hate Dino Dan and love the DVR so that I can let my boy watch something far more informative and entertaining for him.  Moving on…recently my son has entered the “you must sit and watch this with me” phase and I am left with some very real questions about these shows.  I call these cosmic questions because I really don’t think there are answers for them…but every time you see the show you ask yourself the same questions and eventually you want to write to the creators to find out.  I told you that stress does funny things to me.

The first of my questions involves Max & Ruby…now I love Max & Ruby; they are very cute and once you get past the urge to go “mmmmm, chocolate bunnies” they are highly amusing.  I understand Max perfectly, mostly because I have a son that is just like him…unfortunately he also has an older sister who can be very Ruby-like.  But every time I watch this show I ask the same question:  Where are their parents?  They have a grandmother who lives very nearby, but they have no parents!  Ruby does everything, and although she is a great bunny scout, she is not the mother…so where is their mother?  Speaking as a mother this upsets me greatly!  I mean there is a Mr and Mrs Huffington who care for Baby Huffington…clearly other bunnies have parents, why not Max & Ruby?

Then there are The Backyardagins…Pablo is a penguin, Tyrone is a moose, Tasha is a hippo, and Austin is a kangaroo.  But the all-encompassing question:  What is Uniqua?  This has been irritating the crap out of me for years, and the best that we have ever been able to come up with is some type of insect; perhaps a ladybug.  But you can’t really tell cause she is pink with pink polk-a-dots all over…the only thing you really have to go on is the antennae of sorts on her head, which leaves an insect or an alien.  My other question:  Why are 3 of their houses connected with the same backyard and the other 2 have to come through doors in the fences?  They can’t be related given that they are all different animals, so why is this?

There are some new shows in the past couple of years on Nick Jr…one of these is Team Umizoomi.  While this show is most educational and informative, I see a huge problem:  How big is a “unit”?  The reason I ask is that they measured the depth of the lake and it was 10 units deep…then they measured how big a leaf was that Millie was floating on, it was 5 units long.  According to my logic that is either a really small lake or a really big leaf!  Then I saw that Dr Bot needed to know how hot soup was, and one bowl was 4 units hot.  I’m not a teacher or educator, but I can see how this could potentially confuse children in school…it confuses me!  My daughter came to me the other day and said that she was 5 units tall…Yeah…I had no idea what to say.  It was explained to me that they use “unit” so that it will easily translate into other countries…but shouldn’t your “units” all be the same size to have any idea what you are doing?  Not to mention that weight is measured differently than length, and temperature is measured differently than depth.  When they get in school they can’t say that it is 80 inches hot outside, or that will earn them a poor grade.  Then one day I was half awake and I heard Geo say something about looking for a heptagon…I had myself convinced for weeks that I just heard it wrong, but no I didn’t.  He wanted to find a 7 sided shape, called a heptagon.  When did we start having heptagons?  I went through math in college and never heard of a heptagon until I watched Team Umizoomi!  And decahedrons too…do our children need to know what a decahedron is before Kindergarten?  These are things that cause me much consternation and make my eyebrows get scrunchy.

Another new show, which I find highly amusing, is Bubble Guppies…I just love Mr Grouper.  Did you know that he can make himself both green and zebra stripped?  He is amazing, but I am left wondering if the Bubble Guppies are orphans.  I know they go to school each day, but they also do everything with Mr Grouper…like camping and he gets them a dog and he takes them to Big Bubble City.  So I wonder if it is like an old fashioned orphanage where the “head master” is both their caretaker and their teacher.  I don’t know about anyone else, but as a mom if my kid came home from school with a dog I would be slightly upset…so they must be orphans and all live together, right?

They recently started playing Toot and Puddle in the mornings again and don’t get me wrong, the artwork in that show is incredible, but I have one main nagging question.  How is it that these 2 very fashionable friend pigs who live in a tiny cottage in the woods afford to jet off to China to see the Great Wall, or to Spain to take part in the running of the bulls?  Are they independently wealthy?  Did they inherit the money?  Where did this fundage come from? 

These are the questions that keep slightly insane mothers up at night, and why we should limit our time in front of these programs.  A few years ago when Casey went through this very same phase I took up cross stitching because I could do it while sitting on the couch with her and I could listen to my ipod to prevent these trips into insanity.  I tried this with my son, but he won’t have it, he must sit on my lap…thus preventing me from staving off the insanity.  So I guess this is how I will deal with it with him…I will blog about it, cause really, who reads this crap anyway!?

 
So here’s to insanity induced blogs…Here’s to coping strategies…and (Oh Hell, why not?) Here’s to preschool television, because we’re all mad here!!