Peppa Pig burst into existence last May 2004. Peppa spoke in a British English accent and the show revolves around her adventures with her family and friends.

But a lot of psychologists warn of the dangers of watching Peppa Pig without any parental guidance. Many mothers are becoming conscious of Peppa’s bad influence, and are slowly banning the show from their households.

According to a Harvard study, don’t let your children watch Peppa Pig as the show encourages the following negative traits.

• Suffers from the syndrome of superiority;
• Inappropriate behavior;
• Imposes ideas regardless of others’ opinions;
• Impolite;
• Competitive (it does not how to lose);
• Intolerant;
• Disrespectful
• Envious;
• Arrogant;
• Proud

The site shared:

According to experts, there is a proof that shows an increased inadversarial, snide, questioning, confrontating, and disrespectful behavior in children which results from watching cartoons such as Peppa Pig. Peppa is downright rude and her parents allow her get away with murder. There is an episode where Peppa and her brother George refused to tidy their room, but then their parents made it into a game. When they finished, the brats trashed the room again, laughing arrogantly.

My niece is 2.5 years old and loves Peppa Pig.

She watches Peppa Pig in two languages, English and Mandarin. She is also ill-mannered, answers back to her parents, and very adversarial. She hates sharing and almost tried to strangle my 1-year old daughter when we went together on vacation.

I wonder if Peppa Pig had anything to do with it?

To be honest, I have yet to watch the show.

For one, we have a relatively strict no-gadget policy and have yet to expose our daughter fully to the wonders of iPads and the Internet.

Hence, without exposure, our daughter is mostly ignorant of the evils of the Internet. She is only 13 months old after all, a bit too young for technology in my opinion.

In contrast, I have bought her a lot of books from the Internet. My husband shakes his head on his crazy wife who have bought complete books of the Berenstain Bears and Dr. Seuss. “She doesn’t even know how to read yet,” he said.

“That’s okay,” I replied. “She’ll learn. And when she does, she’ll have books to read.”

Two, I do not want to expose my child to shows I have yet to censor.

I think it’s easy for parents to just give a tablet to a baby just to shut them up. For many of my friends, their kids started watching Youtube videos when they were merely a few months old. My nephew-in-law Saren will hem and haw until you give him an iPad while he eats. If he does not have an iPad, he will not sit down and eat.

For me, there is no replacement for face-to-face interaction. I honestly don’t think gadgets make the best mommies. In fact, I agree with this New York Post article that states that gadgets are digital heroin and make kids zombies.

“But they keep my child quiet!” other parents insist. “I get to do my chores and leave them in peace. Anyway, they are watching educational videos.”

Have you ever taken away a gadget from a child?

Like seriously, have you seen how adversarial they become when you take away a phone or iPad? While their eyes are glued to the screen, they look like sweet little zombies. But once you remove their ipads, it’s as if they turn into Baby Hydes, wailing and lashing out as if the end is here.

Then what do you do? Return the iPad to them?

Three, I don’t feel comfortable exposing my child to any possible role model who answers back.

While I do believe that we should build our child’s confidence and encourage them to speak up, I also believe that there’s a line of a child speaking his mind and sharing his opinion and defying his/her parents.

 

It’s okay for a child to give his/her opinion. It’s okay for him/her to question his/her parents. But at the end of the day, they need to follow.

Case in point, a child is walking towards a busy street.

“NO!” you shout at your child. Because you are afraid they might get into an accident. Because you can see the dangerous traffic, and you know it’s possible your child may get hit.

If your child is trained well, he/she will stop. Mommy’s rules are law, and today is no exception.

But if your child is used to defying you, he/she will ignore you and continue on. And he/she will get hurt in the process. And other people may also get hurt because of your child.

That’s the danger of giving a child free rein. They are children. You are still their parents. Not their friends. So it’s better to act like it.

I guess that’s why my dad refused to let me watch The Simpsons until I graduated college. Which is funny because The Simpsons became social satire which correctly predicted Trump’s win as POTUS.

But looking back, Bart was truly a bad influence.

He disrespected his parents, fought with his sister, and created trouble wherever he went. His father Homer was a deadbeat who didn’t result to much. And while Lisa was a better role model, she wasn’t enough to save the show’s moral code.

After college, I did start to watch The Simpsons. The show was still funny and entertaining, but I am thankful that I started watching the show after I’ve reached a lever of maturity and intelligence. I think my parents saved themselves from a lot of pain by picking and choosing the shows that I watched before letting me watch them.

“But that’s censorship!” other parents will say. “These shows have already been approved by experts before showing to kids. If they were evil, they would not show it?”

Oh really? They were properly vetted by the experts? Did you double check that these shows were studied carefully before they were aired?

I’m sorry — it’s my kid, and I want to make sure that what they are watching are truly healthy and good for them. And if that means watching the show beside your child as they watch it, then so be it.

And if that doesn’t make me a cool mom, then so be it.

I don’t need to be a cool mom in order to be a good mom.

How about you? How do you pick and choose the programs your children watch?