In the past few years, kids as young as toddlers have had more and more access to the internet. Now, especially after the pandemic, parents have started to notice how that decision has been causing some side effects.
There are some things specifically that can be harmful to kids, like longer-than-approved screen times and, as it turns out, some kids shows have proven to stunt brain development in toddlers. CoComelon, for example, has been proven by child development expert Jerrica Sannes to be so overstimulating that it acts like a drug in infants’ nervous system and causes symptoms of addiction and withdrawal in kids that have been watching it.
Once parents started to acknowledge how bad cartoons can mess with a kid’s brain, they became worried about what kind, if any, of online exposure would be beneficial to kids. And that’s where Bluey comes in.
Getting to know Bluey
“Bluey” is a TV show created by Joe Brumm and produced by Ludo Studios that was commissioned by both the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) and the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and has been on air since 2018, and while it is aimed at preschoolers, people of all ages have been enjoying it!
The TV show showcases sisters Bluey, who is six years old, and Bingo Heeler, who is four, and their parents Chilli and Bandit as they venture school, friends, family and new experiences. And, yes, as the “Heeler” last name implies, they are indeed both dogs, heelers, in fact!
The show, despite being quite colorful, fun and imaginative, isn’t overwhelming to kids since it doesn’t switch from scenes too fast, nor does it overloads their sensory inputs with music or sound too busy and it doesn’t require kids to change and process emotions faster than how kids usually do, and that’s the game changer for parents.
Still, after the CoComelon scandal of sorts, adults, who didn’t before, have now been picking up and paying more attention to what their children watch and have started accompanying them during “watching hours”. This means that they get exposed to the same content as toddlers are, and the thing is that infants aren’t the only ones enjoying Bluey.
Joe Brumm decided to write a show based on his experience parenting two daughters and the way they act and interact with friends, parents and the world. Coming from a perspective of someone who has seen kids interact that way but, being a parent himself, he knows the kinds of messages other parents need to hear, and that they’d be watching with their kids, so that’s how he delivered it to them. Even though the episodes are 7 minutes long, they still have well-developed stories that are able to touch and inspire parents and kids.
Some episodes focus on the funnier side, like “Grannies”, where Bluey and Bingo play as old ladies and bicker about whether or not old people can floss (yes, the 2018 dance… this is an old episode), since Bluey keeps telling her sister off for doing so but Bingo is just having so much fun! Eventually, they call their grandparents and they, indeed, cannot floss, which upsets Bingo, who leaves the room quite sad. When Bluey complains to her mom about how her sister just doesn’t get it, her mom asks her if she wants to play sister or be right, and Bluey reflects that maybe being right wasn’t so important in the first place.
The episode still is humorous, as it ends with Bluey’s grandparents learning how to floss, but it still teaches kids a lesson about how sometimes, it’s ok to be wrong and how pushing what you believe isn’t always going to end up fine, and it can also teach parents how to deal with conflict resolution!
A HUG FROM A PARENT TO ANOTHER
But then again, some episodes are good for kids and better for parents. Sometimes, adults can’t help but think that they’re doing something wrong since things aren’t going how they planned or how others report how childcare actually is, and that may leave them stressed, unmotivated and just overall sad. For this kind of feeling, Bluey got parents covered, while still being fun and relatable for kids.
The episode “Baby Race” starts as Bluey compares her physical abilities in the playground to other kids’, especially with Judo’s, a friend of hers, and her mom tells her that she should not compare herself to others and, instead, “run her own race” and then tells her daughters how she learned that lesson herself.
When Bluey was born, Chilli started to participate in a mothers’ group where she and other moms with newborn kids would interact and discuss motherhood together and, despite the group being meant to comfort the mothers, she started to compare her daughter’s achievements with other moms: Bluey learned to roll over very early and Chilli took that accomplishment to heart, feeling very proud of herself, but when Judo learned to sit up before Bluey, Chilli started to imagine the situation as a race in which she had to win and be the best, the one with the fastest kid.
Judo soon started to reach all of her milestones before Bluey and that left Chilli brokenhearted and worried that she wasn’t good as a mother– she talked to her mother-in-law and even doctors and they just didn’t seem to help her the way that was needed, and all that made her only sadder.
That was until Bella, another mom in the group, noticed that Chilli was so sad that she wasn’t even attending mothers’ group anymore, so she decided to have a chat with Bluey’s mom. Bella showed that it was not her first time being a mother, she actually had nine kids! And that she was sure that Chilli wasn’t doing anything wrong, she was actually doing great. That lesson shifted her view towards everything!
Chilli started to be kinder to herself and even allowed her brain to be proud of others’ kids, leaving the jealousy and desperation aside, after all, kids all develop at a different rate. Eventually, Bluey did start walking by herself in the kitchen, going after her mom who was washing the dishes and when Bluey, hearing the retelling of the story, asked her mom why she suddenly decided to walk, and Bingo chimed in answering with “maybe you saw something you wanted”, in regards to how she was after her mom.
This episode has a certain entertainment value to kids, as they will love to learn more about Bluey and her friends and babies and the lesson of “everyone has their own rate” is quite valuable to them, but this episode caters more to parents. Mothers and fathers all around the world were touched by the message that it is common to feel like you’re doing something wrong, but you’re not a failure for not reaching your standards. The magic surrounding “Baby Race” is that it teaches both audiences important, but still different, lessons that are very important to hear. The video tagged below shows a mother’s reaction to the episode– she is where Chilli was and she just gets the feeling.
Another touching episode for parents is “Rug island”, where Bandit has to leave for work while his daughters insist that he plays with them, so he decides to stay with them just a little while and he ends up learning an important message. While playing with Bluey and Bingo, he notices how magic the girl’s world seems to be, how imagination flows everywhere, with felt pens being transformed into fruit and fish and snakes, and how it all seems so fun, and when faced with an opportunity to go back to “adult world”, he chooses to stay with his kids and enjoy being one himself just a little bit longer. Eventually, when he leaves, he gets a felt pen as a gift from his girls and when asked by his wife what it was, he replies with “everything”.
Kids may not get what he meant, or maybe they’ll assume that his answer is based on the fact that the pen CAN actually be anything for the Heeler sisters, which is not a wrong interpretation, but that object can be more; it represents how the little time he managed to spend with his daughters is so precious to him and how much he cares for them, maybe, it’s not exactly the pen that means “everything”, but the experience and the memories surrounding it. This episode can make parents notice how important spendings time with their kids can be to them and their sons and daughters, and how precious playtime is together.
Lots of episodes also feature the girls’ extended family, showcasing their younger cousins (who still need some help to adapt to the older girls’ games, so they need to learn to have patience and be tolerant), their aunts and uncles (who in episode “Double Babysitter” teach the kids that it’s fine to be scared of new things, but that with a little help you can always figure it out) and grandparents (who teaches the “parents parents” in the audience a lesson in episode “Grandad”, when Chilli’s dad insists on playing with the kids and doing physical activity despite being told to rest because of his illness, and later ends up noticing how worried Chilli is about him when she confesses that, despite being an adult, he is still needed in her life, so he should take it easy and enjoy her presence– and maybe listen to her a little!).
The family relationships are very well written and realistic, which may fancy kid’s interests even more, as they will find themselves and their siblings, cousins and grandparents reflected on their media. However, these relationships will also interest the parents, as they will see how Chilli and Bandit deal with the different parenting of their daughters’ cousins Muffin and Socks, how touching Chilli’s family dynamic can be and how they seem to have distanced from each other in the past years. As one episode shows, she and her sister Brandy’s meetup after years of not seeing each other because it hurt for Brandy to have lost a baby and see her sister having two kids, an experience that may be very real to parents watching the show, or how Chilli deals with only having one living parent; another different different dynamic that a different audience might relate to is Bandit’s, where everyone is so close and in contact that the kids’ bringing up may even happen together.
However, despite how a family may work, how they interact, their kids’ ages or any other variant that there may be, Bluey is for sure going to touch them in one way or another. The show works so delightfully for kids and more for parents, and even teenagers have said to like it! So if you or anyone you know wants some show recommendations, Bluey is a good watch to add to your list.
The article below was edited by Fernanda de Andrade Silva.
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