Caillou

I agree with the other comment about how bad this show is. Caillou is a 4-year-old kid and he does and says lots of bad things. It often takes several minutes of watching the show before he is castigated for it, and by that time, the children watching have forgotten that he did anything bad. Plus, the grandma voiceovers reinforce the badness. An example is that Caillou is supposed to go somewhere with his parents, while the grandma stays at the house and watches the baby. Caillou lays down on the floor and starts throwing a temper tantrum. The grandma voiceover says, "Caillou didn't want to go with his mommy and daddy." Then the parent moseys on in, says, "Caillou, time to go!" He cries and whines a bit, and then the parent says something like, "We're going to stop for ice cream on the way home," and Caillou jumps up, all happy, and goes. I feel this is poor programming to show to young children.

My son likes Caillou, but I won't let him watch it anymore. (He's 3, we stopped watching it when he was 2).

I wrote a nastygram to the Caillou email that's given on the PBS website, and got back a response as follows:

"The premise behind CAILLOU and his adventures is that they reflect the real life experiences and emotions of a 4-year-old child. However, we do take your comments seriously and we will share your concerns with the production team and their child development consultants."

I am sure that Caillou's "emotions" are pretty close to those of a 4-year-old! I'm just not sure that the Caillou adults handle him in an appropriate manner. I don't want my kids to expect the kind of treatment Caillou gets, when they act like he does.

Trivial thing: one of Caillou's stuffed animals is a T. Rex named (predictably) Rexy. Rexy claims that his favorite food is lettuce. If my son grows up thinking that T. Rex ate lettuce, I'm not doing my job as a parent!!

"Caillou" is one of only two PBS for Kids programs who's appeal is totally lost on me...and my children don't like it either. Part of it is the vocal characterization of Caillou-who's whiney little voice is like nails on a chalkboard. Couple this with insipid dialogue and sickly-sweet plotlines and you've got a show that, despite it's intent, few kids will want to sit through, let alone learn from.

I hate to sound so harsh, but it must be said that Caillou has had one of the worst influences on children I have ever seen. Caillou is a 4 year old bald child who is very spoiled by his parents. They spoil him so much, that when they tell him to wait, he breaks out into a tantrum and begins to cry and scream "I want this now!" Honestly, this is something you would expect from a 2 year old child. The parents don't ever get mad at him nor do they teach any good manners. Instead they give him what he wants almost like a reward and he yells "Yay!", then plays like a little baby.He also has a baby sister Rosie, who is pretty bratty too, but she is little so I can understand. The 2 dimensional cartoon's animation is very, very bad. Pictures are drawn sloppily and appears very fake.

Let me close with this as proof that this show is a bad influence. I have a 4 year old brother. Like most 2 year old, he used to break out into tantrums. Then he began to watch Caillou. The only thing that he has matured in his speech. He still has temper tantrums and is a crybaby for a child his age. I recommend this to a to-be parent that wants to know how NOT to raise a child. As far as children go, don't let them watch this. You'll have a brat on your hands in the near future. Put on The Wiggles.

Caillou is the worst children's show ever. He is such a bratty kid and that picks up other kids to his behavior. Spongebob is 10000% better than Caillou!

Seriously?! This show has a freaking terrible influence on kids. My niece was obsessed with this show and would throw tantrums and act out if you didn't put it on for her. She would act like Caillou all the time and be a brat and whine a lot. Even with her parents putting her on timeouts and giving appropriate punishments she would still act out every time she watched the show. When we had her watching other shows she never acted that way. I watched the show myself (several excruciating episodes) and I found it to have very bad influential instances, and it was often "silently" racist... I can't believe they ever aired this show on PBS... If I could give this show a zero rating I would... Whoever wrote/created this show must be clueless about parenting among many other things. I can see from reading the other reviews that a lot of people noticed the same things I did, so why didn't the people screening the show notice all of this terrible crap and halt the production? Freaking garbage show, man...