We have a bit of a dependency problem in our house right now and it’s far worse than any dummy issues we have had. Dora the Explorer has infiltrated my home and taken hold of my innocent little girl. At the moment, I am at a loss as to how to overcome the problem. Actually I don’t know how it even got to this point, it just kind of crept up on us and now we are dealing with a pretty serious addiction to the big-headed demon with the purple backpack.
I had held her off the Foxtel cartoon channels for such a long time, my preference for her TV time was always ABC2 because of the lack of commercials and well, crap like Dora, but after becoming bored with the irritating and repetitive Giggle and Hoot episodes we both needed something new.
That’s when it started.
At first I thought it was fairly convenient that Dora is on 3 times a day for a total of roughly 6 hours, in the rare time slots when Dora is not available, I have backup’s saved to our planner.
This makes me an enabler.
And a dealer.
At first I thought it was cute that she was so into it, but lately it has become ridiculous. It’s the first thing she asks me each morning and God forbid I try to change the channel to something as offensive as the news. She goes into full blown withdrawal meltdown at the mere suggestion that Dora is turned off. When I offer to put it on, I hear a loud, excited “Yeah!” often followed by Dora style dancing and the chant of “Boots, Boots, Boots!” which is what she calls it – because their marketing is not yet powerful enough to overcome the limited vocabulary of toddlers.
Earlier this week Mr Bond insisted on watching one of the morning shows which meant that Skye had not had her morning ‘fix’. All morning she was out-of-sorts and difficult, but it wasn’t until I switched over to Nick Jr that she calmed down and stopped being such a nightmare. She sat glued to the screen, barely looking up for half an hour. It was the I realised how bad the problem had become.
Something has to be done. I am considering staging an intervention not just for Skye’s well being but my sanity – if I have to listen to “We Did It!” one more time I think I might lose it!
Does anyone know of a 12 step program for cartoon addiction?
