PicoBlog

Like any parent, I've spent more than my share of time in the young children’s entertainment world.

I remember a performance of Sesame Street Live and leaving with Elmo and Big Bird flashlights.

A company I worked for in a past life brought Barney to our office picnic. I was surprisingly excited about this until I found out my daughter had an issue with the live version of the purple dinosaur.

My girls spent so much time glued to the tv watching “Full House” that when we went to a Beach Boys concert, with John Stamos sitting in on drums, my youngest asked me, “Who are these guys with Uncle Jesse?”

And don't get me started with the nasty behavior of Minnie Mouse, at Disneyworld.

The reason for the above four graphs is because, for the last ten days, the fifteen-month grandson of my partner has been visiting, along with his parents. He has a huge crush on the new kid in town in the children’s entertainment genre, Ms. Rachel.

If you aren't familiar with her, let me fill you in: Rachel Griffin-Accurso is a forty-ish-aged woman who has a college background in music as well as being a preschool teacher. She and her husband have a young child who didn't start speaking until he was two years old. She found that singing cute children's songs to him was a creative way to help him learn. They figured what worked with their child might help others, so by putting together a huge series of videos, Ms. Rachel became the latest big thing on YouTube and TikTok.

Honestly, it's easy to see why she’s so well-liked: Ms. Rachel is usually dressed in very cute outfit of blue jean overalls with a pink t-shirt and pink headband. In fact, almost everything about her act is very cute. She sings and talks in a voice that attracts and helps to keep young toddlers’ attention. That's pretty amazing since the usual toddler's attention span is about fifteen seconds. Even the props she uses are mostly cute toy animals. She finds extremely tiny squirrels, dogs, cats, and lions that she takes in and out of a tree while singing her trademark phrases, “put it in, put it in, put it…IN” and “take it out, take it out, take it…Out.”

Her act has made Ms. Rachel rich beyond anyone’s belief, including her own. Her net worth is estimated at forty million dollars. That's right…$40,000,000!

But, there’s a fine line between being cute and being annoying. That fine line, along with big bucks, leads to plenty of criticism, especially online. Let's face it, when an attractive woman is on your tv, telling you to put it in and take it out multiple times, it’s easy to sexualize her…too easy. I'm sure that's far from what she had in mind when she started this project.

Then came the announcement that one of the video performers, Jules Hoffman, is identifying with they/them pronouns. Not that this is anyone’s business and it shouldn't in any way detract from the messages in the videos, but for some reason, many parents were upset by this.

Sadly, the combination of all of these things led to nasty messages on the TikTok site. It's hard to believe that something as innocent as a woman singing “The Wheels on the Bus” could lead people to behave that way, but welcome to 2023, where nothing is surprising.

All of this was overwhelming and led Ms. Rachel to take a short break to focus on her own mental health.

There a more than a few things to take away from this story, but the main one is appropriate during Mental Health Awareness Month: It’s easy and takes little effort to be kind. The good news is Ms. Rachel now feels better and is back to making new videos. To the people who made the remarks that led to her break, you need to do better.

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