I spent five days locked indoors with a nearly-3-year-old with a cold and an ear infection, while I tried to work full days and keep some semblance of sanity. To the absolute disgust of luddites everywhere, my weapon of choice to keep the child happy and allow me to get stuff done was none-other than what some parenting experts would call the devil itself: Netflix.
I gave in to every request for "my puohgammes" because, frankly, three hours into this bout of illness, I'd run out of ideas to keep her entertained and all she wanted to do was lie down on the sofa anyway. Suits me.
After five days of that damn pink pig as the soundtrack of every article I've written here, I have some reckons:
Peppa Pig is absolute trash. I don't even know how anybody thought that was a good idea for a kid's show in the first place and my only regret was not paying attention to it and only noticing what absolute rotten garbage it was after spending money on related merchandise (we have books and pyjamas with that stupid face on it now and it's more useless than actual crap because, well, crap can at least be used as manure).
Honestly, I won't even attempt to list all the ways in which Peppa Pig is bad because that is an insurmountable task and I mentioned I have a toddler so I'm way too tired for that kind of thing.
Just know this: Peppa Pig — and, in fact, her whole family — is the absolute worst. This warning goes out to all parents who, unlike me, might have been strong enough to resist it so far. You keep on fighting. Do not let that pig into your home.
Peppa Pig, her idiotic brother George and even her swine of a mother, spends most episodes fat-shaming Daddy Pig (the only remotely likeable character in that family tbh). I mean, the password to Peppa's treehouse is "daddy's big tummy" so that's the kind of thing we're dealing with here.
Peppa is disrespectful to her parents, rude to her friends, an almighty sore loser, and just overall everything you don't want your child to be. Her brother George calls vegetables "yucky" (seriously, has whoever wrote this show ever tried parenting a child?). I mean, how hard is it not to include the word "yuck" in a show for impressionable kids?
The show is also ridiculously sexist. My toddler now walks around saying certain things are "only for girls" in a hideous Peppa tone, meaning this absolute swine has dismantled the very foundations of everything I've been working on for the last two years. For that, she can absolutely rot in pigs' hell.
My bad for not doing my homework and looking this up beforehand — but, in my defence, I've barely slept for three years and I'm very, very tired.
From anecdotal stuff I'd seen floating around, I thought the issues with Peppa Pig were that she'd give my child a British accent or teach her that spiders aren't scary. Both those things are absolutely fine in my book when compared to the sexist, fat-shaming, disrespectful behaviours I've got to get my child to somehow forget about now. Honestly, at this point, making friends with spiders is the least of my worries.
It took me a good couple of days of the kind of negotiations that would make me a valuable asset to the UN but I finally convinced my daughter that "actually, Peppa is yucky" — which is a real euphemism for what I actually think of that pig.
Luckily for me, I've got a solid alternative.
Now that Peppa has been banned in my house, life can truly begin and, honestly, I feel like nothing if not a mumfluencer for all the right values I'm going to try to instil in my child without that perverse influence over us.
First off, I got myself a new friend to help with this task: my new best friend: Daniel Tiger's Neighbourhood.
Daniel Tiger is wholesome. He is a child tiger who loves his parents and his friends and is always trying to do the best for everyone else. Sure, the songs are grating, but not nearly as grating as freaking George calling everything "yuck" or that ridiculous "jumping in muddy puddles" jingle from Peppa-F***ing-Pig.
Because I'm at a level of mental exhaustion (also called "toddler parenting") that often sees my brain muddle reality and fiction and sometimes think of these cartoon characters as if they're as alive as my real-world friends, I often see the situations Daniel Tiger encounters and wonder how Peppa would react. Let me tell you: not well.
Daniel, on the other hand, faces conflict and learns from it all, just like you've always dreamt of your child doing. Each episode presents Daniel with a conflict but also a strategy to solve or cope with it. You only have to look at the title of Daniel Tiger's songs to know this is nothing if not wholesome: "When We Do Something New, Let's Talk About What We'll Do!", "Saying I'm Sorry Is the First Step", "You Can Take a Turn, and Then I'll Get It Back", "Try a New Food, It Might Taste Good", "With a Little Help You Can Be Brave" or "Find a Way to Play Together!".
Daniel dishes out the wisdom casually but often enough for it to stick around in your child's mind (she says, hopeful).
In the "Daniel feels two feelings" episode, Daniel learns that it's okay to feel two feelings at the same time, even if those two feelings are conflicting.
Like, for example, I want my child to stop watching so many cartoons but I also want to safeguard whatever bit of sanity I have left while this wave of sickness takes over the house. And that's a-okay.
