Why my girls don't watch TV

Dora The Explorer. My girls don't know her. They don't watch TV because, as I've told them, TV turns your brain to oatmeal and besides I wanted them to learn to read first.

Now that they are both good readers, they are so involved in reading and writing and creative play based on the things they read and write they never ask if now is the time for them to start watching TV.

And I'm glad.

Read the following excerpt from a New York Daily News article that has parents up in arms about the proposed makeover of a freakin' cartoon character -- as if she was real, as if she mattered. . .

Creators of Dora the Explorer, a favorite character among preschoolers that teaches kids English and Spanish, say they are just making her move with the times.

The tweenage Dora will live in the big city, attend middle school and have a new wardrobe and accessories.

"For nearly ten years, Dora the Explorer has had such a strong following among preschoolers, catapulting it into the number one preschool show on commercial television," said Gina Sirard, Mattel's vice president of marketing.

"Girls really identify with Dora and we knew that girls would love to have their friend Dora grow up with them, and experience the new things that they were going through themselves.

"The brand captures girls' existing love of Dora and marries it with the fashion doll play and online experiences older girls enjoy."
Critics say they would prefer Dora to grow up true to the character she is as a child.


Friends, the day any of my children "identify" more closely with a cartoon character than with their parents, grandparents, or heroes or heroines from good literature (and, no, Dora-themed books do NOT count)I'll be looking for a tall bridge off which to throw myself. Because I will have failed as a parent.

My kids don't have to go 'round quoting Shakespeare or William Blake, but I'd rather see them pretending to be -- wanting to be -- like Laura Ingalls Wilder or the girls from Little Women or Caddie Woodlawn or Anne of Green Gables. Real people or characters based on real people placed in stories with substance and intricate or engaging or enlightening plots.

There are a million ways to learn Spanish, so no one flame me and say "But Dora is so educational for biligual learning."

Bull.

Dora, like so many cartoony things is purely for entertainment and profit. Dress her up in the flimsiest "educational" guise and suddenly she has credibility?

No way.

TURN OFF YOUR TVs, those of you who let your kids watch them ad nauseum. Let them craft their pretend play around characters they make up on their own! Let them imitate the greater characters from classic children's literature!

But for pete's sake -- and that of our culture at large -- don't encourage them to "identify" with Dora or anyone of her ilk. These are cartoons, people, and they are not fit for unregulated human consumption.