Ok, I'll put it out there. I'll ask the question and hope it doesn't expose me as an 'un-hip' mum. And I'm going to use capital letters to make sure I get my point across...
WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH YO GABBA GABBA?
Look at them. (image) I've never taken an hallucinogenic drug but I'm certain, if I did, this is what I'd see. It's all so.... colourful... and strange... and those eyes... kind of sad and kind of weird and kind of spooky. The voices are those of creepy nightmare creatures.... and the songs linger and torment my brain for days...
AND WHAT'S THAT?.......
Looks a bit like a poo to me. (image)
We have a 'no TV' rule for before school EXCEPT if both kids are dressed, including shoes, then they can watch TV until we leave the house. Suffice to say, the TV is never turned on in the mornings. And it's 'no TV' in the afternoons too, but if they remember, they're allowed to turn it on at 5pm then off when tea's ready.
These rules have only been put into play in the last two weeks and the arguments are getting fewer. I find that the DON'T TURN THAT ON argument is less intense and more easily won than the TIME TO TURN THAT OFF argument.
We weren't allowed to watch TV as children and if it was ever turned on the channel changer never strayed from the ABC. I never watched the Partridge Family or The Brady Bunch but LOVED watching period BBC dramas or comedies. A dramatisation of Wuthering Heights sticks in my mind as does a series called The Nanny (and not of the Fran Dreschser variety). I found The Goodies HILARIOUS, and still do, and remember rolling around in fits if laughter while watching Basil Brush. Ah, the 70's.
Not a one eyed, all singing, all dancing poo in sight.
So if Yo Gabba Gabba is new, modern, cutting edge children's programming... and I don't, well, appreciate it... ummm, I guess I'm not the hip-happenin' (that in itself shows my complete dagginess) mum I had hoped. But at the end of the day, if my kids know Tim, Bill and Graham better than they know the green thing, the blue thing and the poo, I will feel I have done my job.
