Oh Where Have you Gone Wile E. Coyote? Chica's selling for $250 a pop!

If you talk sprout to anyone my age, you are talking beans. But I have discovered a whole new Sprout as a parent.

As near as I can tell (and this whole column will be about my observations and thoughts as opposed to me actually looking things up…what fun would that be?) this new Sprout is like the old PBS we had when we were kids. It is a learning channel for kids. It is the station that plays Sesame Street.

Why Sprout? I have no idea. I imagine there is a lot of incredible market research behind it. Or, maybe it just sounds great to kids. These are people who are fascinated by furry puppets who eat a lot of cookies, so it doesn’t take much to make them smile.

I am not sure how we found Sprout, but now that we know where it is, it seems to run on an endless 24-hour cycle in our home. Most of you know I am an ID Channel addict. Not anymore. Now I am a Sproutlet. Yes, that is really what they call their followers.

Don’t get me wrong. My daughter doesn’t sit for hours and watch cartoons. It is more background noise than anything – something we turn it on to keep her entertained in between activities and naps and meals. And most of the time, if we are watching, we are explaining things to her, so it becomes a learning experience.

Kids take their Sprout seriously. I have even seen a Sprout Live insignia at the bottom of the screen while I was watching. Why in the world would children’s television need to be live? This is not CNN with breaking news. The Cookie Monster ate another cookie? Got it. No need to break into regular programming.

Over the past week, I decided to take some notes on what I was watching. I realized that I started to actually know some of the songs they sing on this channel and that led me to believe I was developing “mush head.” This is a disease I attach to parents who spend too much time around kids. Stay-at-home moms or dads are especially susceptible to this. They only talk about their kids, they frequently revert to baby language and tones and they tend to break out in kids songs on a regular basis. Try to discuss the nation’s debt crisis with them and you get a blank stare before they say, “Numbers? Oh, let me tell you about the Counting Song…1, 2, 3, 4 … one less than five, one more than three…” Yeah, I really don’t know the words, but you get the picture.

So, while taking notes to ensure my child was watching quality television, I came to the following conclusions:

·         Cartoons are much more educational than when I was a kid. They try to teach your kids life lessons, along with reading, writing and arithmetic. I watched something that had a bear family in it and they lived in a house that was apparently in the country. They were “rural” bears and the house next door went up for sale and a “city” bear family moved in. There was friction between the daddy rural bear and the daddy city bear because they did things differently. In the end, they became friends and the moral of the story was, just because someone is different, doesn’t mean they are bad. Good life lesson. We didn’t exactly get that kind of information from watching Wile E. Coyote try to blow up the Roadrunner.

·         There is some kid named Caillou who has his own cartoon show. Caillou? Seriously? Were Fred, Joe and Ricky already taken? What are we teaching our kids by giving main characters names like this? Caillou looks a lot like Charlie Brown, so why not call him Charlie? 

·         There is a show, called the Wiggles, about guys who dress up in funny outfits. I have no idea what this show is about, but Sydney seems to like it. They do a lot of singing. She likes anything with singing. But why are they called the Wiggles? Can anyone answer that for me? They need to keep this stuff simple for old guys like me. There is another show called the Pajanimals that features – yes, you guessed it – animals in pajamas. Now THAT is simple.

·         The old Thomas the Engine book is now a show. But he has seven or eight other engine buddies to help him out with his adventures. Cool.

·         There is this little bird called Chica who is apparently the rage with kids. Chica talks with a high-pitched squeak. Sydney loves her. You are supposed to “sing along with Chica and do the tweet, tweet, tweet!” I know Chica’s fandom has hit Justin Bieber-like levels because my wife got the idea to get on Amazon and see if she could find a stuffed Chica for Sydney. Average price? Are you ready for this? You are not, I promise you. Sit down for a sec. Ok, average price….$250. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND? Sydney will get version 6.0 of Chica, when the price comes way down.

·         They do some birthday songs on there and they recognize kids for their birthday. “Hap-pee Hap-pee Birthday to you, to you, to you!” I can’t get the damn song out of my head. I guess the idea is, if you are watching from home and see your name or picture on TV, it is a big deal. It is like Willard Scott for toddlers. But here is my problem with it: parents put their 2-year-old kids up there. They are 2! They barely know their name. They aren’t going to take time out from drooling to even enjoy it and they certainly will never remember it. These are the same kind of parents who take their kid to Disney at age 3 or have huge birthday parties for them when they are still in diapers. If you are going to do this stuff, make sure it is a time in life when they get maximum value out of it.

·         At night – which in kiddie land is about 6 p.m. – they have a Good Night show, or something like that. It features a chick who looks like Lindsay Lohan before the booze. She talks to what looks like a big couch pillow shaped like a blob. But his name is Star, so I think he is supposed to be a star. Makes sense with the good-night theme.

·         Even the commercials are geared toward kids. Sydney is fascinated by a commercial for lights that display images on your ceiling at night time. It looks like an old projection machine and you can project an image of hippopotamus or something like that into your room. When that commercial comes on, she stares intently throughout. I would buy it for her, but it would keep her up at night and if you follow this blog, the one thing Sydney does not need it less sleep. Let me correct that: the one thing Brooke and I do not need is less sleep.

The bottom line on cartoons is our parents had it a lot tougher than us for two reasons:

1) Cartoons were not as educational back in the day. We can justify all of today’s TV watching as learning. TV watching = learning = good parenting. Yeah, that’s it.  

2) We have smart phones and can play Words with Friends or surf the Internet to keep ourselves entertained while the Wiggles are wiggling away on the screen. This, my friends, helps ward off mush head.