A Tribute to Dora the Explorer

We seem to be at the stage now where neither of my kids want to watch Dora the Explorer any more. 

Despite Tancred being a mere two years old, he has decided that it is too babyish for him.

He’s probably just copying Roger Jr on that, but it raises the prospect of waving goodbye to one kiddie programme I’ve become quite fond of.

To begin with, I was just as horrified by Dora as I was by all the other offerings of CBeebies, Nickeloden and whatnot. And yet, it soon grew on me enormously.

Not to the point where I would choose to watch it by myself obviously.

To the point where:

• It doesn’t do my head in completely.
• I will happily sing along with songs on it, even in the presence of adult visitors.
• In general, I find myself hoping that there’s another episode on next, rather than something else.

In all seriousness, Dora is a brilliant role model for all kids:

• She’s a minority-ethnic character but that’s just one aspect of her. It doesn’t define her completely. This is how kids think about “difference” and it’s how we should encourage them to carry on thinking about it.
• Similarly, she’s a girl doing traditionally non-girly things. That she’s a girl is just a fact about her, unlike 95% of other girls in kids’ media, where being a girl necessarily entails adherence to some kind of pink princess-fantasy. We have two boys and if you don’t have kids, you’d be astonished at how quickly little boys can become raving sexists. I think that Dora has had a positive on their perception of “geee-uuuuuuuurls”.
• My god, it took some getting used to, but she’s so bloody NICE! Dora never gets angry, she’s never rude and she always wins over baddies by being reasonable. I wish I could say that she’s influenced our kids in this way as well...

Of course, the voices are tremendously irritating and I’d rather my kids were a little older before the American cultural blog absorbed them fully - although having said that I don’t think the five voice actors who overdub EVERY SINGLE non-UK produced kids TV programme with British accents need any more work.

And yes, we have occasionally found ourselves in the odd situation of our kids knowing the Spanish word for something and not the English. It’s pretty weird to be told “Daddy, look an arco iris!”

But I will genuinely miss Dora the Explorer if the kids are giving up on it. For myself, I will continue to say “Oh Maaaaan!” in the manner of Swiper the Fox until the day I die.