Maybe don't sit your kid in front of Peppa Pig for a year. I'm more inclined to suspect they're picking up Britishisms more than accent, but maybe it could be dependent on the age of the kid, too.
Now she has a posh English accent after spending a year at home watching Peppa Pig.
Maybe don't sit your kid in front of Peppa Pig for a year.
I'm more inclined to suspect they're picking up Britishisms more than accent, but maybe it could be dependent on the age of the kid, too.
Peppa Pig is seriously addictive, non-violent, and entirely uncontroversial. It seems to teach valuable life lessons. It's safe. I can see why a parent would prefer to live on an endless circle of...
Peppa Pig is seriously addictive, non-violent, and entirely uncontroversial. It seems to teach valuable life lessons. It's safe. I can see why a parent would prefer to live on an endless circle of Peppa Pig instead of vetting every single media their child consume. I'm not saying that is correct (or not), but I think that's why the pink pig dominated the world.
I agree with this but not for the reasons you think. Among my parent friends, Peppa Pig is universally disliked and the reasons why are pretty consistent and not controversial at all. I don't ban...
entirely uncontroversial
I agree with this but not for the reasons you think. Among my parent friends, Peppa Pig is universally disliked and the reasons why are pretty consistent and not controversial at all. I don't ban my kid from choosing Peppa when he's allowed to watch TV because he's a small human with his own agency which I encourage - but I do try to guide him to other, better things. Bluey (if my kid picks up an Aussie accent from Bluey I'm fine with that), Sarah and Duck, Charlie and Lola, Kiri and Lou (same for a Kiwi accent), almost the entire output of Children's BBC which isn't Peppa Pig is better than Peppa Pig. Except Moon and Me. Fuck Moon and Me, and luckily my kid agrees with me on that one. He goes out of his way to point at Moon and Me and says "no" when choosing stuff to watch.
My kid only really watches TV via the BBC app so I don't need to vet anything in advance.
I believe Peppa Pig is, well, an imbecile. But I watched a bunch with my nephew and I did not find her behavior objectionable. The parents are maybe too permissive? It concerns me that her whole...
I believe Peppa Pig is, well, an imbecile. But I watched a bunch with my nephew and I did not find her behavior objectionable. The parents are maybe too permissive?
It concerns me that her whole world lacks real conflict, or any sentment besides amusement and very mild irritation. I'm not really worried about the actual objective things cartoons teach children, but I wonder if such a filtered version of reality is conducive to a healthy psyche. Last year, my nephew watched it almost exclusively. I showed him some 90s not age appropriate Spider-Man and he loved it. I may change my mind if I ever become a parent.
Maybe the most problematic thing about Peppa Pig is how it was clearly designed to provoke addictive behavior. The episodes are made of sub byte-sized mini-episodes that play without interruption. There's a sense of unending continuity with easily digestible stories that kind fuses with one another. Combined with autoplay, the child has little recurse but to surrender to a seemingly infinite torrent of well packed stupidity... and it is not easy for an adult to break the cycle.
Peppa is an idiot. She's rude and disrespectful to her parents - especially her dad, she's mean to her friends, she's a bully, she's self-centered (I mean sure, all kids are but let's not...
Peppa is an idiot. She's rude and disrespectful to her parents - especially her dad, she's mean to her friends, she's a bully, she's self-centered (I mean sure, all kids are but let's not encourage it), there's some really outdated ideas about gender, her little brother is awful, she seems often to lack wonder which is such a terrible thing not to encourage in a child - the list goes on.
It concerns me that her whole world lacks real conflict, or any sentment besides amusement and very mild irritation
My kid is 2.5. His real world pretty much lacks real conflict and any sentiment besides "good" and "bad". Things in his life are mostly either amazing or terrible. You can't tell very little kids complicated stories, they can't process them. You can show them deeper emotions - we have some amazing books about death, for example - but they're still simple stories. Repeating simple stories over and over, on TV or books or even in song, is one way they learn to process stuff. As they get older they'll want more from their stories but pre-school age? It's all very big, simple things. Because that's what toddler emotions are like. Big and simple.
the most problematic thing about Peppa Pig is how it was clearly designed to provoke addictive behavior.
It probably wasn't, at least not by the production team. It's probably more that pre-schoolers have very short attention spans and making long episodes loses their attention. My kid will just sit through a single 20 minute short film, and then only if you catch him at the right time. 5-10 minutes is perfect though. If the TV network decides to cram 5 episodes back-to-back into a half hour show that's on them.
and it is not easy for an adult to break the cycle.
I dunno, it's not that hard. My kid would watch TV forever if he could (actually not true, tried it once just to see and he gets bored after about an hour) but I have the remote. When we're done, we're done. I say "last one" and we watch a last one and the TV goes off. Sometimes he makes a fuss but he gets over it, and making kids do shit they don't like for their own good is part of being a parent.
Anyway, the main problem with Peppa Pig isn't so much that Peppa Pig is a bad show (although it is) it's that there is so much better out there they could be watching instead.
Just as a safety measure: I don't have any kids, I do not claim to know more than anyone that has kids, please don't get mad at me internet people. My nephew is 5, so a bit older. I certainly...
Just as a safety measure: I don't have any kids, I do not claim to know more than anyone that has kids, please don't get mad at me internet people.
My kid is 2.5.
My nephew is 5, so a bit older. I certainly don't advocate for complexity, but at some point I believe it's probably a good idea to introduce conflict a bit stronger than "I forgot to bring my keys" or whatever.
I dunno, it's not that hard.
Maybe you're just, like, a great parent? :) My nephew was not easy to handle in that regard, even though he's pretty chill overall.
It probably wasn't, at least not by the production team
Yes I'm aware that things for children tend to be short, but there's other stuff too that I mentioned.
I suspect he's getting to the upper age range for Peppa Pig at that point. I haven't spent a lot of time with it. There is plenty of 5+ media which is more complex. But sometimes it's nice for...
My nephew is 5, so a bit older.
I suspect he's getting to the upper age range for Peppa Pig at that point. I haven't spent a lot of time with it. There is plenty of 5+ media which is more complex.
But sometimes it's nice for them to not have to think - which is related to why young kids like repeating the same stories over and over again, it's soothing for them to exist in a predictable world for a bit. Adults do it too - how many people do you know who listen to old albums or rewatch movies or TV shows? It's a smart bit of brain hacking. The other night my kid asked me to read Goodnight Tractor five times in a row, back to back. A book he's known word-for-word since before he could speak, but he was using it to calm himself. Clever boy.. (probably wasn't conscious if I'm honest)
Maybe you're just, like, a great parent? :) My nephew was not easy to handle in that regard, even though he's pretty chill overall.
Well, I am that. (it's really not that hard, it's just tiring!) :D
But it's just practice - both for you and the kid. By the time you've done it three, ten, twenty, fifty times with your nephew it would be easy for you too.
My kid and I just discovered Bluey last week, and we both love it. And I'm game for playing with him with an Australian dialect, which he seems to enjoy, too.
My kid and I just discovered Bluey last week, and we both love it. And I'm game for playing with him with an Australian dialect, which he seems to enjoy, too.
Bluey is so, so good. There's so much to learn there for parents as well as kids. It often makes me cry, in a way I really wouldn't have done before the kid was born. The episode Sleepytime in...
Bluey is so, so good. There's so much to learn there for parents as well as kids. It often makes me cry, in a way I really wouldn't have done before the kid was born. The episode Sleepytime in particular leaves me a complete wreck, as does Granddad - and several times I've had to talk about the difference between happy and sad tears with the kiddo.
I would happily watch Bluey even without the kid, and I think that's an indicator of good children's media, that it's good all on it's own - same for books, got three new picture books delivered today and read them on my own at lunchtime. Sarah and Duck is another TV show which is that good - a few years ago (pre-kid) at New Years when my wife had just had a miscarriage we stayed in on the sofa and watched Sarah and Duck all night and it was lovely.
Children’s shows on the internet terrify me. I remember growing up watching public access TV shows like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhoods. I think that those shows were made and curated with the interests...
Children’s shows on the internet terrify me. I remember growing up watching public access TV shows like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhoods. I think that those shows were made and curated with the interests of children in mind.
The new generation of children shows seem mass-produced to farm ad money.
When I was growing up a lot of kids TV was produced purely to sell cheap plastic toys so I guess things haven't changed that much, we've just dispensed with having a physical product. I am SO glad...
The new generation of children shows seem mass-produced to farm ad money.
When I was growing up a lot of kids TV was produced purely to sell cheap plastic toys so I guess things haven't changed that much, we've just dispensed with having a physical product.
I am SO glad I live in a country with a state-funded media who have a legal requirement to produce quality kid's programming. BBC Children's is incredible.
Specially with streaming, I'm pretty sure we're better overall nowadays, even outside UK. I'm not exactly anti-fictional-violence, but back in the 90s most cartoons were about beating people up.
Specially with streaming, I'm pretty sure we're better overall nowadays, even outside UK. I'm not exactly anti-fictional-violence, but back in the 90s most cartoons were about beating people up.
This is not remotely surprising. I'm British, and my child has long put on an American accent to play games with her friends and cousins (who all do the same). The hegemony of Disney, Hollywood,...
This is not remotely surprising. I'm British, and my child has long put on an American accent to play games with her friends and cousins (who all do the same). The hegemony of Disney, Hollywood, and American media generally means that this is mostly a one-way street, so it's kind of amusing that Peppa Pig of all things is paying it back.
Hell, I even remember as a youth that I'd try out Americanisms in my speech ("trash," "high school," and "sidewalk" being some that spring instantly to memory). I hadn't ever heard the name Tara out loud until I watched some Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and completely mangled the pronunciation of it, much to the amusement of my family.
Kids are language-learning machines, and they pick up patterns and dialect more readily than you or I. If the person they hear saying the word "mummy" the most is a cartoon character, rather than family or peers, then they are more likely to mimic that. 90% of the time they'll grow out of it once they realise that's not how their peers talk.
The detail about mincemeat pies for Father Christmas is cute~ Kids are pretty flexible - when I was young we moved to the states, and I lost my British accent pretty quickly. That does make me...
The detail about mincemeat pies for Father Christmas is cute~
Kids are pretty flexible - when I was young we moved to the states, and I lost my British accent pretty quickly. That does make me skeptical, though - if having parents with British accents wasn't enough to keep my accent steady in the face of constant American accents, I sort of doubt episodes of TV show could change accents, even in relative isolation.
(Isolation does have an impact, though. I had an American accent up until I fell ill as a teen and suddenly was housebound and spending most of my time with my parents. Now it shifts depending on who I talk to, although it's probably never fully British.)
'Allo 'allo. My kid did the Peppa Pig accent years back. He has three legitimate accents, and he subconsciously switches accents depending on the person's language and accent. When he talked like...
'Allo 'allo. My kid did the Peppa Pig accent years back.
He has three legitimate accents, and he subconsciously switches accents depending on the person's language and accent.
When he talked like Peppa Pig, it was definitely conscious mimicry.
Maybe don't sit your kid in front of Peppa Pig for a year.
I'm more inclined to suspect they're picking up Britishisms more than accent, but maybe it could be dependent on the age of the kid, too.
Peppa Pig is seriously addictive, non-violent, and entirely uncontroversial. It seems to teach valuable life lessons. It's safe. I can see why a parent would prefer to live on an endless circle of Peppa Pig instead of vetting every single media their child consume. I'm not saying that is correct (or not), but I think that's why the pink pig dominated the world.
I agree with this but not for the reasons you think. Among my parent friends, Peppa Pig is universally disliked and the reasons why are pretty consistent and not controversial at all. I don't ban my kid from choosing Peppa when he's allowed to watch TV because he's a small human with his own agency which I encourage - but I do try to guide him to other, better things. Bluey (if my kid picks up an Aussie accent from Bluey I'm fine with that), Sarah and Duck, Charlie and Lola, Kiri and Lou (same for a Kiwi accent), almost the entire output of Children's BBC which isn't Peppa Pig is better than Peppa Pig. Except Moon and Me. Fuck Moon and Me, and luckily my kid agrees with me on that one. He goes out of his way to point at Moon and Me and says "no" when choosing stuff to watch.
My kid only really watches TV via the BBC app so I don't need to vet anything in advance.
I believe Peppa Pig is, well, an imbecile. But I watched a bunch with my nephew and I did not find her behavior objectionable. The parents are maybe too permissive?
It concerns me that her whole world lacks real conflict, or any sentment besides amusement and very mild irritation. I'm not really worried about the actual objective things cartoons teach children, but I wonder if such a filtered version of reality is conducive to a healthy psyche. Last year, my nephew watched it almost exclusively. I showed him some 90s not age appropriate Spider-Man and he loved it. I may change my mind if I ever become a parent.
Maybe the most problematic thing about Peppa Pig is how it was clearly designed to provoke addictive behavior. The episodes are made of sub byte-sized mini-episodes that play without interruption. There's a sense of unending continuity with easily digestible stories that kind fuses with one another. Combined with autoplay, the child has little recurse but to surrender to a seemingly infinite torrent of well packed stupidity... and it is not easy for an adult to break the cycle.
Peppa is an idiot. She's rude and disrespectful to her parents - especially her dad, she's mean to her friends, she's a bully, she's self-centered (I mean sure, all kids are but let's not encourage it), there's some really outdated ideas about gender, her little brother is awful, she seems often to lack wonder which is such a terrible thing not to encourage in a child - the list goes on.
My kid is 2.5. His real world pretty much lacks real conflict and any sentiment besides "good" and "bad". Things in his life are mostly either amazing or terrible. You can't tell very little kids complicated stories, they can't process them. You can show them deeper emotions - we have some amazing books about death, for example - but they're still simple stories. Repeating simple stories over and over, on TV or books or even in song, is one way they learn to process stuff. As they get older they'll want more from their stories but pre-school age? It's all very big, simple things. Because that's what toddler emotions are like. Big and simple.
It probably wasn't, at least not by the production team. It's probably more that pre-schoolers have very short attention spans and making long episodes loses their attention. My kid will just sit through a single 20 minute short film, and then only if you catch him at the right time. 5-10 minutes is perfect though. If the TV network decides to cram 5 episodes back-to-back into a half hour show that's on them.
I dunno, it's not that hard. My kid would watch TV forever if he could (actually not true, tried it once just to see and he gets bored after about an hour) but I have the remote. When we're done, we're done. I say "last one" and we watch a last one and the TV goes off. Sometimes he makes a fuss but he gets over it, and making kids do shit they don't like for their own good is part of being a parent.
Anyway, the main problem with Peppa Pig isn't so much that Peppa Pig is a bad show (although it is) it's that there is so much better out there they could be watching instead.
Just as a safety measure: I don't have any kids, I do not claim to know more than anyone that has kids, please don't get mad at me internet people.
My nephew is 5, so a bit older. I certainly don't advocate for complexity, but at some point I believe it's probably a good idea to introduce conflict a bit stronger than "I forgot to bring my keys" or whatever.
Maybe you're just, like, a great parent? :) My nephew was not easy to handle in that regard, even though he's pretty chill overall.
Yes I'm aware that things for children tend to be short, but there's other stuff too that I mentioned.
I suspect he's getting to the upper age range for Peppa Pig at that point. I haven't spent a lot of time with it. There is plenty of 5+ media which is more complex.
But sometimes it's nice for them to not have to think - which is related to why young kids like repeating the same stories over and over again, it's soothing for them to exist in a predictable world for a bit. Adults do it too - how many people do you know who listen to old albums or rewatch movies or TV shows? It's a smart bit of brain hacking. The other night my kid asked me to read Goodnight Tractor five times in a row, back to back. A book he's known word-for-word since before he could speak, but he was using it to calm himself. Clever boy.. (probably wasn't conscious if I'm honest)
Well, I am that. (it's really not that hard, it's just tiring!) :D
But it's just practice - both for you and the kid. By the time you've done it three, ten, twenty, fifty times with your nephew it would be easy for you too.
Yes I would love to do that! Sadly he's in another continent so I only see him during vacations. But I try to make the most of it.
My kid and I just discovered Bluey last week, and we both love it. And I'm game for playing with him with an Australian dialect, which he seems to enjoy, too.
Bluey is so, so good. There's so much to learn there for parents as well as kids. It often makes me cry, in a way I really wouldn't have done before the kid was born. The episode Sleepytime in particular leaves me a complete wreck, as does Granddad - and several times I've had to talk about the difference between happy and sad tears with the kiddo.
I would happily watch Bluey even without the kid, and I think that's an indicator of good children's media, that it's good all on it's own - same for books, got three new picture books delivered today and read them on my own at lunchtime. Sarah and Duck is another TV show which is that good - a few years ago (pre-kid) at New Years when my wife had just had a miscarriage we stayed in on the sofa and watched Sarah and Duck all night and it was lovely.
Children’s shows on the internet terrify me. I remember growing up watching public access TV shows like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhoods. I think that those shows were made and curated with the interests of children in mind.
The new generation of children shows seem mass-produced to farm ad money.
When I was growing up a lot of kids TV was produced purely to sell cheap plastic toys so I guess things haven't changed that much, we've just dispensed with having a physical product.
I am SO glad I live in a country with a state-funded media who have a legal requirement to produce quality kid's programming. BBC Children's is incredible.
Specially with streaming, I'm pretty sure we're better overall nowadays, even outside UK. I'm not exactly anti-fictional-violence, but back in the 90s most cartoons were about beating people up.
This is not remotely surprising. I'm British, and my child has long put on an American accent to play games with her friends and cousins (who all do the same). The hegemony of Disney, Hollywood, and American media generally means that this is mostly a one-way street, so it's kind of amusing that Peppa Pig of all things is paying it back.
Hell, I even remember as a youth that I'd try out Americanisms in my speech ("trash," "high school," and "sidewalk" being some that spring instantly to memory). I hadn't ever heard the name Tara out loud until I watched some Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and completely mangled the pronunciation of it, much to the amusement of my family.
Kids are language-learning machines, and they pick up patterns and dialect more readily than you or I. If the person they hear saying the word "mummy" the most is a cartoon character, rather than family or peers, then they are more likely to mimic that. 90% of the time they'll grow out of it once they realise that's not how their peers talk.
The detail about mincemeat pies for Father Christmas is cute~
Kids are pretty flexible - when I was young we moved to the states, and I lost my British accent pretty quickly. That does make me skeptical, though - if having parents with British accents wasn't enough to keep my accent steady in the face of constant American accents, I sort of doubt episodes of TV show could change accents, even in relative isolation.
(Isolation does have an impact, though. I had an American accent up until I fell ill as a teen and suddenly was housebound and spending most of my time with my parents. Now it shifts depending on who I talk to, although it's probably never fully British.)
'Allo 'allo. My kid did the Peppa Pig accent years back.
He has three legitimate accents, and he subconsciously switches accents depending on the person's language and accent.
When he talked like Peppa Pig, it was definitely conscious mimicry.