Go Back, Diego, Go

Our late morning routine involves the boys napping, Abbie watching TV, and me downgrading to passive childcare. If an emergency pops up, I’ll deal with it, otherwise, I’m busy catching up on my reading. The Internet isn’t going to read itself.

As soon as Abbie and I lay the boys down, we walk into the kitchen, grab a snack, and prepare the television. I record “Dora the Explorer,” her favorite show, every morning; that way we can avoid the evil commercials while watching television when it’s most convenient, i.e. brothers’ naptime. I need to rewind the tape before we start, and that way she can watch Dora every morning.

Except that she hasn’t gotten to watch Dora this week. Nickelodeon, purveyors of quality preschool programming and questionable tween programming, moved Dora’s timeslot back a half hour this week. In its place is “Go, Diego, Go!” which is basically a slightly older, slightly male-oriented version of Dora. It’s similar, but not an acceptable substitute according to Abbie.

It takes me a couple days to figure this out and adjust the VCR’s timer. Until then, all I can do is offer to let her watch Diego or a Sesame DVD, and cover my ears when she screams “Dee-yah”* back at me, followed by a tantrum.

We went through this last week as Nickelodeon used the same altered schedule then, too. By Wednesday, I had the VCR set and recording Dora for her. By Saturday, I assumed they’d go back to their normal schedule for this week, and switched the timer accordingly. Silly me; I failed to account for the callousness of a cable network.

How could they do this to toddlers and their parents across the country? Don’t they realize how routine-oriented we are? It’s not such a big deal for parents like me who are ambitious enough to set the VCR, but the children who watch television shows as they’re broadcast are out of luck. For 40-some weeks a year, these toddlers get used to watching a certain show at a certain time. These toddlers will then saunter up to the TV after breakfast one day, turn it on expecting to see their normal show, and, without warning, find “LazyTown” on instead. That show creeps me out, I can only imagine what it would do to a toddler expecting to see something animated.

I suspect the schedule change is related to spring break. School-age kids are suddenly home all day home all day in need of age-appropriate television shows. So they change the schedule a bit to air the grade-school friendly shows during the day. For some reason, this necessitates sliding Dora back a half-hour.

My more cynical side says Nickelodeon randomly shuffles their schedule to expose children to new shows. After the kids overcome the trauma of missing their regularly-schedule show, they watch it, decide they like it, and demand to start watching that show everyday, too. Eventually, the child starts watching every show in the line-up. While I can see some benefits to keeping a child occupied with the television all day, I insist on limiting Abbie to one show a day. Instead of rotting her brain watching television, she’ll use her body and mind running around the living room, trying to find new ways to climb on the furniture.

For the past couple of days, her one show has been Diego. It took some time, but she eventually realized that watching it was more enjoyable than throwing a tantrum. She might even be starting to like the show. Good thing I finally remembered to change the VCR timer.

* That’s “Dora” in Abbie-ese.