Upon scoring nearly 100 children’s TV shows by popular request, it became obvious that the vast majority of shows for young children, especially those advertised as “educational”, are fast-paced and attention-grabbing with high-stress scenes and developmentally inappropriate modeling of negative behavior.

Only a handful of children’s shows have passed the rubric. These shows are slow-paced with natural color tones. They do not use unnatural visual effects such as dancing letters, swirling shapes, flashing colors, or high-contrast backgrounds to hold the child’s attention. They speak in normal voices and use rich vocabulary within character conversations. The high-quality storylines provide context for the vocabulary and they are careful not to distract from character conversations with loud music and/or distracting sound effects.

Most importantly, they model kindness, empathy, friendship, prosocial skills, and emotional intelligence.

Of course, this rubric and the overall scoring process is highly subjective. However, many parents have reported a dramatic improvement in their young child’s sleep, play, mood regulation and behavior simply by replacing their typical shows with better ones.

The following shows score 69/100 or lower on the rubric, meaning these shows are most likely to lead to challenges with sleep, mood, behavior & attention.

Animal Planet

Animanimals

Arthur

Baby Einstein

Backyardigans

Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures

Barney and Friends

Beat Bugs

Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom

Blippi

Blues Clues

Bo on the Go

Buster the Bus

Carl's Carwash

Chip and Potato

Clifford

Cocomelon

Cory Carson

Daniel Tiger

Franklin

Gabby's Dollhouse

Hey Bear Sensory TV

If I Were an Animal

Little Baby Bum

Max and Ruby

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

Numberblocks

Octonauts

Paw Patrol

Peppa Pig

PJ Masks

Pocoyo

Shaun the Sheep

Simon

Songs for Littles (Ms. Rachel)

Spirit Riding Free

Super Why

Super Wings

Teletubbies

The Wiggles

Waffles & Mochi