Why Calliou Has Been Banned At The Binary Household
4 min read
Shifting gears from technology centric posts I thought I would shake it up a bit and throw in some parenting posts. Most of my readers and followers have small children (7 yrs and under) and most likely if you do you have seen the horrible show called Caillou on the children channels. This show plays almost 24×7 in fact if you go through your TV guide now there will be an episode that will air within a 2 hour window at any point in the day.
Like us you start to watch the show and half pay attention to it and you will think it’s a cute story about a 4 year old and his life’s adventures about growing up. After a while you will realize, and so will your kids, that Caillou is the epitome of how not to raise a child, you will see how awful Caillou’s parents really are, and your children will start to mimic Caillou’s terrible behavior. I am not alone, as I tell this story of a complete ban and avoidance of this show to other parents we know, they too have taken the same route and for the same reasons. You should to.
I will try to break it down. Here’s the innocent looking theme from the most recent episodes. Take note, I do believe new episodes ended in 2005.
Cute kid right? Ha.
Here are the problems that this show has and the messages this show conveys.
Calliou’s parents. The show’s flaw is 100% on the parents. If they were more controlling and correcting to Caillou’s outbursts I wouldn’t be writing this post. But they are not. They seem to be unemotional, flat, anti-dicplinarians that use soft language and let Caillou whine all the time. His parent’s and teachers, pretty much all the adults are never visible when the kids are outside. Remember Caillou is 4 and you assume so are all his friends. I think Caillou’s parents abuse pharmaceuticals and alcohol. Dead serious. There are few episodes that have night scenes with the Caillou and his baby, BABY, sister screaming and crying and the parents never show up.
My favorite episode is one where a storm goes through, a big storm, and in the morning they see a huge oak tree was ripped out of the ground. Now looking at the size of the tree you get an idea of how big the storm had to be to cause that damage. The show has Caillou and his sister scared to death in their room as the storm is blowing outside. But in the morning as Caillou’s mom is driving by and they see the huge oak tree she says, “That must have been a big storm, I slept right through it.” You also slept through your traumatized children screaming in their room too. She was knocked out from mixing the wine and sleeping pills to not hear that…. and where was daddy?
Calliou himself, encouraged by his parent’s lack of control, is what the kids hook on to. He whines all the time. ‘Awwwww!!!’ is a common phrase. ‘I don’t want to!!!!’ is another. ‘No!’ is another. His constant whining about his baby sister getting in his way and his cat annoying him is an every episode event. He also throws things in anger, stomps his feet and the list goes on. I am all for having kids see those types of behavior as long as it’s followed up by the consequences, corrections and message that it’s not OK and there are other ways to express your feelings. Caillou misses it and your kids will repeat it.
I have also noticed that Caillou loses and breaks almost everything he touches.
Below is a great example of Caillou’s behavior and it’s really shocking that this is in a TV show. Most episodes are like this where Caillou has a spoiled brat meltdown and the parents do nothing to correct the behavior. So what happens is that your kids will see this, soak it in, and then start to whine, say the same things, and act out just like Caillou knowing that the parents didn’t do anything and Caillou got away with it all the time so why can’t they. It took us a few months to put two and two together to realize that the ‘terrible 2’ behavior was actually being spawned from our son imitating Caillou’s actions.
BANNED!
The quality is quite poor but if you have never seen an episode watch the first few minutes.
Look around the Internet and you will easily find similar posts about this show. YouTube is filled with examples far more vulgar and bashing than mine. Perhaps this is why the show went out of production and is in constant re-runs now. Regardless we no longer allow this show to even be mentioned and my 4 year old now sees this show as the cry baby show. Which it is. There is no educational take aways from this production whatsoever. It’s an experiment on childhood behavior modifications. It’s an anti-parenting effort.
Living in Minnesota my ears are far more tuned to the Northern accents it’s quite clear to me the Canadian production of this show. Listen to the narrator a little bit and you will know what I am talking ‘aboot’.
We don’t have the TV on for hours on end but when we do it’s a focused event. Diego has stepped in place of Caillou and we noticed the imitations end immediately and Diego is a far more educational and awesome mind exercising show for a young mind anyway.
End of Line.
Binary Blogger has spent 20 years in the Information Security space currently providing security solutions and evangelism to clients. From early web application programming, system administration, senior management to enterprise consulting I provide practical security analysis and solutions to help companies and individuals figure out HOW to be secure every day.
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