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viewsWhat Calliou Taught Me
By ascreamin, Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 2 comments
Some of you (if the title was enticing enough to draw anyone in) may be wondering just who is Calliou. If you are not around little kids very often, you probably wouldn’t know. I didn’t. Not until my niece was a toddler and she watched Calliou religiously. Now my own boys, ages 3 and 2, are also Calliou addicts, after moving on from Bob the Builder and the Mickey Mouse Club.
Calliou is a four year old, bald, Canadian kid, without the Canadian accent. We watch his shows on On Demand over and over again. Every morning Jonas, my two year old, wakes up and orders, “ Watch Calliou now.”
At first, the show bothered me. Like a lot of other mothers, I found Calliou weird and misleading. For one, his voice is whiny and two, he’s bald. How many four year olds do you know who are bald?
“Maybe he’s supposed to be recovering from cancer,” my husband suggested once.
But that’s not in the storyline. After I thought about it some more, I figured Charlie Brown was bald and I never questioned it. So maybe it’s not as misleading as I thought, at least not for children. (A quick Google search entry did finally yield an answer – in the original books on which the TV show Calliou is based he was younger and had no hair. So there you go).
Every episode of Calliou has a formula. It includes a lesson about something, a fantasy (like Calliou driving a bulldozer) and a simple and corny song that my kids love and must listen to repeatedly.
The other day I found one of those songs stuck in my head, the one titled “It’s a Happy Day," wtih lyrics that basically repeat the title over and over.
My office mate at work asked me what I was singing.
“Nothing,” I said.
Surprisingly, I also recently found myself reciting something I’d learned by watching Calliou. At lunch one day, after all the rain storms we'd been having here in the Boston area, another colleague asked “Just where the heck does all this rain come from anyway?”
“Well,” I began…
I must say, I felt pretty smart.
And if I’m learning something , my kids must be too, which means maybe a bald, whiny kid from Canada is not so bad. The show is probably better, from an educational perspective, than the Flintstones and Captain Caveman, two of the 70’s cartoons I was addicted to as a child.
Anyway, whether good or bad, I know Calliou’s days are numbered. It won’t be long before my boys tire of him too and move on. These changes happen quickly, whether I’m emotionally ready for them or not. Heck, I’m still missing Bob the Builder. No doubt when Calliou’s time comes, I’ll be missing him and my children’s unconditional love for him, too.
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2 Comments
I agree!
While I'm not a mother (yet), I agree some kids' shows can also teach parents or, in my case, aunts. Noggin's Pinky Dinky Doo always helps me brush up on my vocabulary!
As kids we all can recall
As kids we all can recall our favourite shows; Bagpuss (yup a stuffed cat that came to live when his owner Emily went to bed) or The clangers (don't ask) and of course I can't forget Paddington Bear.
These days, as you are experiencing, kids tv has developed so much and the subjects covered are vast! I have to say when my daughter became obsessed with Barney and I found it rather 'creepy' almost sickly sweet.
Em, London
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