Pinky Dinky Doo

I have said it before and I don't apologize for it. My children watch television. There are days when we don't watch any at all and there are days when we watch more than we should. I am grateful I am a parent now when there are choices about what your child can watch. I had a conversation with two friends once about how our 1970s parents let us watch whatever was on. It took me twenty years to realize that Janet Jackson's character Penny on Good Times had been burned by her mother during the commercial break. However, at age six, I got REALLY mad with JR on Dallas not acting like Major Nelson. "WHERE'S JEANNIE? WHERE'S JEANNIE?" I screamed at my dumbfounded parents. They probably should have taken that cue and said, "She's in bed, let's go find her."

I want to plug a show that has been a great help to me. My daughter never sat for stories. She never cared for plots and character development. If I asked her what happened, she would either say, "Nothing" or "I don't remember." She couldn't re-tell me anything. Since my memory is perfect, instant recall, like my whole life happened yesterday, this really stressed me out.

Even if she didn't tell me what happened, she has always loved books. When she was one, I had, like all good moms, baskets and baskets of "edible" books. She would take the books and pick them up, flip them, and throw them. Then we would put the books back in the basket, and she would start the process again and again and again. I didn't know this wasn't normal. About six months later, I had to take them out of her room all together because she was chewing them down until she fell asleep. Oh the memories.

She got older, and I had to deal. What to do about stories? All of those speech goals came back over and over and over again: 1) Answer simple questions. 2) Sequence events 3) Re-tell in her own words. OK, as her mom, these are some of my favorite things. I spent my elementary and middle school years in the high language arts classes and resource math. Caught all kinds of hell for it too. How could my child not want to do it?

We worked on it. We worked on it a lot. One of her favorite things was sequence puzzles. First, we put on our socks, then our shoes, then we tie them, THEN we go outside. Not too difficult, but the problem with those is that her mother doesn't always have it together. I would totally run out the door in two different socks and a barefoot baby in New England in February.

Enter the television show Pinky Dinky Doo. A little girl with (HURRAY! TRUMPET!) a little brother AND a pet guinea pig. They live in the big city with their parents and Pinky tells stories in her story box with her brother and guinea pig. THEN they play all kinds of games to make sure that the children watching at home get the story.

Some of the great games: "What came first?" "Who said what?" and "The Great Big Fancy Word Game." Next thing I know, something that I spent quite a bit of money on came naturally to her. We even went up to the attic and dragged down a wardrobe box that we colored and cut apart until it became our very own story box. It is still falling apart in the playroom, although we did hide it on the day one of mommy's childless Manhattan friends came for a visit.

What do I personally like about this cartoon chick? Well, she is a chick. Not that I am a super uber feminist, but it is nice when a main character is a female every now and then. Another thing that keeps my kids rolling on the floor is all of her "appropriate" potty talk. Once they were in a spaceship made out of a toilet and they thought they were going to land on a planet full of crying babies with dirty diapers. You better believe she had my children's attention.

The songs and the catch phrases stick with you, Yesarooni, Positooni... for one is quite obnoxious, but at this point of my motherhood career, if children are happy, I am sane. She also teaches both of my kids to think if a problem arises. Bottom line, if your child is struggling with story telling, make room in your child's schedule for this one.

No, despite my shortcomings, my kids don't watch television 24/7. We do have two televisions, and once in a while they want to watch different things, but Frances and Kenneth tend to gravitate toward each other, so it isn't really that necessary. Thanks to cable, gone are the days of my siblings and I getting to stay up on Friday nights for The Dukes of Hazard but ending up still awake to watch Kristen shoot J.R. On snowy days when I can't take it anymore, Pinky is on Nick Jr. doing her thing.

And I'm scrubbing the floors with my bare hands while I make a three course dinner ...ha ha ha.