Caillou

As a 45 year-old parent of a 4 year-old daughter I must say I have to agree with some other reviewers here - this show is terrible. I guess the developers of this show fail to understand that 4 year-olds will see Caillou as a role model and they do not get the character arc. So when Caillou is being whiny or ungrateful and he learns how to behave in the last few minutes of the show, what kids remember is the whininess, not the lesson.

Caillou is a horrible show that teaches kids how not to behave. My daughter actually started to behave much worse after being exposed to this show than she did before seeing it. At one point she even copied Caillou's style of tantrum - where he falls on the floor and kicks his legs while crying - on one level that was amusing but it was clear that our daughter was using the show to learn very bad behaviour. Thanks to the title lock on our DVR this show is now blocked and our daughter has once again become the sweet, well-mannered and happy 4 year-old she was before she saw Caillou.

There are two problems with this show: the scripts and the acting. Every character is an extremely idealized human being performed in one dimension. And there's no humor! A strained lightheartedness is not humor.

Though some might feel the "positiveness" is good for children, in fact it underestimates their intelligence. In addition, uninteresting performances don't foster artistic discernment in children - it's never too soon to just say no to things which are not artistically worthwhile, even if the intentions are good.

Bring on Sesame Street. Caillou, Dragon Tales and Barney are terrible.

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...

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 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!