Should your kid watch Bluey?
Do people feel a lot of pressure (or is there some other motivation) to let their toddlers watch television? I might just be really exceptional here because I pretty much never watch TV on my own accord (and my husband, the resident TV junkie, is unable to watch TV due to a brain injury..). But I have to be honest, "picking a children's show to watch" literally never comes to mind for me as something I want to do with my precious little family time.
Why do people feel the need to let kids-under-three watch television at all? I can imagine kids who watch tv at their friends/cousins houses might be very persuasive in demanding to see a show, but ... I dunno, just throwing it out there that you can literally have a TV free house if that's what you want.
After all, there is also that post on TechnoSapiens pointing out the evidence that screen time is not great for kids under three. For older kids, readers may also be interested in a relevant chapter in Nurture Shock (a very interesting book overall), which points out that so called "educational" shows, such as Arthur, which model a conflict and then a resolution by the end of the episode, actually usually end up teaching the kids new bullying tactics without even imparting the feel-good "moral of the story".
Just like with Baby Einstein, and anything that claims to teach infants and toddlers language using a passive and inherently non-interactive video screen, you really have to be skeptical. The research shows very young kids learn from real adults, not from the boob tube.
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