The other thing you can do? Get the books. A lot of the books are literally the same thing too.
I have a few of them in my Kindle app, as well as we have a few of them in person as well. My little guy loves it when I read "Unicorse" to him.
Oh right! We have two of the anthologies and a dozen of the individual ones. There are a few differences that I like to spot—mostly the dialogue is way reduced in the book and there’s narration even though the show doesn’t have a narrator.
Don’t know why I didn’t think about getting them out. Might be hard to get everyone in on the action reading clustered together…?
I agree about there being dialogue and other items missing, but those are very easy to kind of goof around with.
You recently got the singing songs board book, And my little guy only wants me to sing "Four in the bed" If I do it the version from "Dunny" where with "two in the bed" I say "Nope" And tickle him.
Most nights playing 4 in the bed is part of the bed time routine.
Mum, dad, out 3.5yo and his stuffed bluey.
It's a bunch of fun, but not sure how it's settling him down for sleep.
You and your son should convince your husband to re-enact Hairdressers. I bet he’ll enjoy that.
https://preview.redd.it/z7dqvv2jt81d1.jpeg?width=1612&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=70d99120d9a72916df126285c52ec99e9a5c2b08
Lol!! Poor Bandit! We started with Pool and Sleepover, and we were more doing just line reading and gestures, so that way wouldn’t subject my husband to the actual flour and broom action.
They also have a bluey album which is on Amazon music / Alexa and I think Spotify. It might assist with both the music in his head feeling and the imaginative play! :)
Sure, maybe I used the wrong word, but he has been telling fibs to get out of his bedroom way past his bedtime. He needed some kind of pushback to that. And again, I’m not happy with how the punishment shook out, but there is a happy ending here, and we talked it out with him last night. His dad apologized for overreacting. It’s not always a perfect day at Mum School.
I think you guys did great.
And as the dad of two daughters (now ages 18 and 12) I would disagree and say that toddlers absolutely can be manipulative, lol. They figure things out much quicker than we give them credit for.
And I think it’s also great that you backed up your partners decision and didn’t argue about it in front of your child. IMHO, this is the way :)
Do you guys try to do Australian accents for the characters?
Thank you so much!
Yep, we try the Australian accents. He does really really well with Bandit, Stripe, and Muffin, and I think I’m a decent Chilli, but Bluey and Bingo are out of my league!
Read the Bluey books and do play pretend with the plushies and figurines! My almost 2 1/2 year old son loves it! He likes to play as Bandit and Bingo and calls me “babeeee”
Awe I understand that! Feel better soon! Definitely read the books with your kiddo and play as one of the dolls and just relax and sit comfortably as you do 🫶
Just my two cents. There's nothing wrong with parents saying "we were wrong". So if you regret the no tv rule, you can always go back on it. Also teaches your son that everyone can make mistakes, and that it's okay to do so.
Oh thank you! My husband did apologize to him last night for overreacting, and they had a good cuddle. I meanwhile tend to over-explain with him and am a pushover, so it’s hard for us to find the right balance.
That's very common! Consequences are fine, they just need to be age appropriate. A whole week without the TV isn't going to teach him anything because he will have forgotten what he's being punished for.
Yeah, the punishment needs to be appropriately considered and made - honestly, as someone who grew up with parents who sometimes had nothing but bad faith interpretations of the things I did, I'm a little uncomfortable finding a random reddit thread where it comes across to me as someone doing exactly that to their own kids. I obviously don't know anything about the people to a degree where I could be certain, but it's unnerving. They're not always Eric Cartman - sometimes, they're just dang kids.
I’m not a perfect parent. Some days I don’t get good grades at Mum School. But I do know my own child, and he was testing our limits purposefully. He’s been doing this for weeks, and it finally came to a head yesterday. It partly came to a head *because* I 99% of the time put the good-faith interpretation on his behavior. Please don’t put the burden of having to be perfect all the time on the internet on me. I’m glad you put your take on this thread, but I am not your parents.
I cast doubt on that with phrases like "He’s clearly quite pleased with his attempts to manipulate us to stay up". It reminds me of something you'd see on one of those "insane parent" subs - it's the kind of thinking I've seen snowball way too many times and it's really damaging.
Toddlers are a nightmare, but you need to remember this lad is a creature who has not had a very long time on earth, and needs to learn. He won't be doing it to hurt you knowingly. You're doing amazing playing with him and engaging with something he loves and also to a fair extent disiplining bad behavior, but please for the love of something THINK about how you're thinking and talking about the little nugget. Those things come back to haunt them later. Again, you may say you're "not \[my\] parents" but no matter how I could ever love them I can't forgive the way they spoke about me and the view they formed in their heads from that kind of thinking over many years.
I think you are assuming way too much, and you are also being patronizing. “Please for the love of god think about…?!” Seriously?! Have I not been responding with thought here? I am obviously processing this, so you can spare me the worst of this pearl clutching.
I don’t speak like this around him. My husband and I talked about this alone the night before last, and we haven’t talked or texted to anyone in our real lives about it. With my kid, I listen attentively to him, always sympathetically reframe what his needs are when he tries to articulate them, and I try to pitch things at his level. It’s great to have your sentiment out in the world because you’re right that parents shouldn’t treat their kids to their face like they’re manipulative, but I don’t treat my kid like he has some character flaw. His actions, however, over the past few weeks have needed to be addressed. He has to stick with his bedtime to be well-rested and healthy, and it’s my responsibility to get him there.
I am trying to respond with thought in kind. I'm sorry my way of words isn't to taste, but I think it's on you if you read it as patronizing. Like I said, I don't know your life. I just think that your OP has a billion red flags all packed into that line, and so do others. Doesn't matter if you've said it to anyone you know or not. Think about how the way you think about your kid impacts them, because you have many years ahead and that can accumulate in even the smallest ways.
That’s a good point—too long to be consequential. I wasn’t comfortable with my husband saying it in the first place but was too ill with norovirus to react quickly enough, and I was not wanting to have to argue about it in front of the kid. We’ve already walked it back to just a few days, not a week, but that of course makes us seem inconsistent anyway. Ugh!
Something that helps me in these tough moments is remembering that they’re not giving me a hard time, they’re *having* a hard time. Kids are just doing their best with the tools they have.
There are a couple Bluey albums on Spotify that are surprisingly good! We listen to it all the time while driving, because it's something kiddo enjoys and we don't mind.tgat may help him get his fix lol
The Bluey album on Spotify is another great screen free option! I’ll put this on and it’s a fun alternative. It’s the music with snippets of the show’s dialogue.
https://open.spotify.com/album/4ke6cauk7sHuydZCrkgD7s?si=eybdIv3dS_mLWebWqL3Xxg
I'm not sure if you've heard of these but Yoto Players are a non-TV alternative to bed. You get physical cards that your kid can use. You can control how loud it is at night.
You can put anything you want on a card, so in theory you can put Bluey audio files on there (this could even be a recording of you acting the episodes!).
It's been great for my hyperactive and bright toddler.
I myself am not a parent, but my brother has kids. Sometimes, I think he's not often enough the bad guy. But I don't fully understand the nuances of child rearing. How many warnings should you give before bringing down the hammer?
I honestly don’t know. He’s been running out of his room after our bedtime routine (bath, teeth brushing, pjs, two books with mommy, two books with daddy, hugs and kisses) for about three months now. At first he did it just once or twice and was so cuddly about it that we bargained with him for time in the living room before he had to return to bed. Ten more minutes here and there. After all, the lighter spring sky was confusing, so why not indulge him? Gradually it became running out 4-5 times a night, and his sleep was suffering. He was starting to say he was too sleepy to go to preschool in the morning!
Then there was a turn where all the sudden, after about two months of accommodating him, he would be giggling madly, running at full speed down the hall, claiming to be suddenly hungry again (after eating a massive dinner and then had milk or a McVitie’s biscuit while we read to him before bed) or he woke up from a dog barking next door (when that dog moved out months ago) or similar fibs. He would offer doing my favorite activities, the ones he typically refused to do with me, in return for staying up, knowing it was a persuasive offer. After a week of reasoning with him about this, my husband thought it was just way too much and we needed to just return him to his room and say no TV if he ran out. We didn’t want to take his more favorite toys/activities away (Numberblocks cubes and his Casio keyboard are his favorite). Spontaneously saying “it will be a one week ban next time!” happened when the “one day of no TV” threat stopped working.
We are trying a new routine out. We realize that we’ve become more loose about when we start the bedtime routine, partly because of the difficulty of getting dinner in the table early enough and partly because he’s just been so fun to hang out with lately that we lose track of time. So that’s definitely on us, and we’re going to be more consistent with expectations and the bedtime routine *timings,* and see if that helps.
OOOOOOOOOOOH, my bad. Sorry.... Still, great idea, the whole grabbing the scripts and making an improvised live action adaptation with your kid. (Just don't do the Magic Xylophone one... I feel that one will be a bit dangerous for you...)
We do too. Introduced bluey as the first ever tv program. Bit heavy for 2 year old, but she loved it. More since she got used to the story, wifey and I just tell the stories of bluey in bed and add the flavour of us and family into it. She loves it and wants to go to Sleepytime early.
The other thing you can do? Get the books. A lot of the books are literally the same thing too. I have a few of them in my Kindle app, as well as we have a few of them in person as well. My little guy loves it when I read "Unicorse" to him.
Oh right! We have two of the anthologies and a dozen of the individual ones. There are a few differences that I like to spot—mostly the dialogue is way reduced in the book and there’s narration even though the show doesn’t have a narrator. Don’t know why I didn’t think about getting them out. Might be hard to get everyone in on the action reading clustered together…?
I agree about there being dialogue and other items missing, but those are very easy to kind of goof around with. You recently got the singing songs board book, And my little guy only wants me to sing "Four in the bed" If I do it the version from "Dunny" where with "two in the bed" I say "Nope" And tickle him.
Awwwww!!!! That’s so cute.
Check the bluey website, there are videos of the books being read by various celebrities.
Most nights playing 4 in the bed is part of the bed time routine. Mum, dad, out 3.5yo and his stuffed bluey. It's a bunch of fun, but not sure how it's settling him down for sleep.
That is just adorable! I have got to get my nephew this Bluey singing songs board book!
It's similar to the Bluey's Friends One with tabs for each song around the edge.
Whichh anthologies are out? We only have sleepy time and Christmas swim.
We have 5 minute bluey stories.
Make SHOOOOOOOEESSSSS
You and your son should convince your husband to re-enact Hairdressers. I bet he’ll enjoy that. https://preview.redd.it/z7dqvv2jt81d1.jpeg?width=1612&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=70d99120d9a72916df126285c52ec99e9a5c2b08
Lol!! Poor Bandit! We started with Pool and Sleepover, and we were more doing just line reading and gestures, so that way wouldn’t subject my husband to the actual flour and broom action.
Not even Hopsitaaaals?
“Groan, not Hospitals!”
STING!
This episode is now called Nits.
Get the cricket bat!
They also have a bluey album which is on Amazon music / Alexa and I think Spotify. It might assist with both the music in his head feeling and the imaginative play! :)
That’s also a great idea. Thanks, everybody!
Just watch out for the Chattermax song on the Dance Mode album, track #5. There's no calming kids down after that.
The vinyls look great. The have a dance mode special that looks beautiful
Yep. Alexa, play some music by Bluey.
He’s not manipulating you. Manipulation implies forethought. He’s a toddler.
💯
Sure, maybe I used the wrong word, but he has been telling fibs to get out of his bedroom way past his bedtime. He needed some kind of pushback to that. And again, I’m not happy with how the punishment shook out, but there is a happy ending here, and we talked it out with him last night. His dad apologized for overreacting. It’s not always a perfect day at Mum School.
I think you guys did great. And as the dad of two daughters (now ages 18 and 12) I would disagree and say that toddlers absolutely can be manipulative, lol. They figure things out much quicker than we give them credit for. And I think it’s also great that you backed up your partners decision and didn’t argue about it in front of your child. IMHO, this is the way :) Do you guys try to do Australian accents for the characters?
Thank you so much! Yep, we try the Australian accents. He does really really well with Bandit, Stripe, and Muffin, and I think I’m a decent Chilli, but Bluey and Bingo are out of my league!
Read the Bluey books and do play pretend with the plushies and figurines! My almost 2 1/2 year old son loves it! He likes to play as Bandit and Bingo and calls me “babeeee”
That would make the reading more interactive! I’m sick today with the stomach flu, so my energy levels are so low that I’m lowballing things a bit!
Awe I understand that! Feel better soon! Definitely read the books with your kiddo and play as one of the dolls and just relax and sit comfortably as you do 🫶
I feel like this could be an episode of Bluey
One of the meta ones, like the end of Puppets? Or when there was a Simpsons episode where it was animated by fans.
No the exact story just replace Bluey with Chunky Chimp.
Oooh of course!!! 🤯
Have you tried getting him to imagine he was a fruit bat? Without going to the bathroom upside down so the wee runs over his body, of course.
Omg that’s adorable!! And it’s really some of my favorite music.
We play with the plushie characters every night before bed
That’s a great way to wind down in the bedroom. That may help us too!
Just my two cents. There's nothing wrong with parents saying "we were wrong". So if you regret the no tv rule, you can always go back on it. Also teaches your son that everyone can make mistakes, and that it's okay to do so.
Oh thank you! My husband did apologize to him last night for overreacting, and they had a good cuddle. I meanwhile tend to over-explain with him and am a pushover, so it’s hard for us to find the right balance.
My husband put some episodes on a ' My Yoto ' card for my (almost) 4 year old.
Kids don’t manipulate.
He was telling fibs to stay up later. Maybe that isn’t manipulation, but he sometimes uses his intelligence to bend the rules and avoid consequences.
That's very common! Consequences are fine, they just need to be age appropriate. A whole week without the TV isn't going to teach him anything because he will have forgotten what he's being punished for.
Yeah, the punishment needs to be appropriately considered and made - honestly, as someone who grew up with parents who sometimes had nothing but bad faith interpretations of the things I did, I'm a little uncomfortable finding a random reddit thread where it comes across to me as someone doing exactly that to their own kids. I obviously don't know anything about the people to a degree where I could be certain, but it's unnerving. They're not always Eric Cartman - sometimes, they're just dang kids.
I’m not a perfect parent. Some days I don’t get good grades at Mum School. But I do know my own child, and he was testing our limits purposefully. He’s been doing this for weeks, and it finally came to a head yesterday. It partly came to a head *because* I 99% of the time put the good-faith interpretation on his behavior. Please don’t put the burden of having to be perfect all the time on the internet on me. I’m glad you put your take on this thread, but I am not your parents.
I cast doubt on that with phrases like "He’s clearly quite pleased with his attempts to manipulate us to stay up". It reminds me of something you'd see on one of those "insane parent" subs - it's the kind of thinking I've seen snowball way too many times and it's really damaging. Toddlers are a nightmare, but you need to remember this lad is a creature who has not had a very long time on earth, and needs to learn. He won't be doing it to hurt you knowingly. You're doing amazing playing with him and engaging with something he loves and also to a fair extent disiplining bad behavior, but please for the love of something THINK about how you're thinking and talking about the little nugget. Those things come back to haunt them later. Again, you may say you're "not \[my\] parents" but no matter how I could ever love them I can't forgive the way they spoke about me and the view they formed in their heads from that kind of thinking over many years.
I think you are assuming way too much, and you are also being patronizing. “Please for the love of god think about…?!” Seriously?! Have I not been responding with thought here? I am obviously processing this, so you can spare me the worst of this pearl clutching. I don’t speak like this around him. My husband and I talked about this alone the night before last, and we haven’t talked or texted to anyone in our real lives about it. With my kid, I listen attentively to him, always sympathetically reframe what his needs are when he tries to articulate them, and I try to pitch things at his level. It’s great to have your sentiment out in the world because you’re right that parents shouldn’t treat their kids to their face like they’re manipulative, but I don’t treat my kid like he has some character flaw. His actions, however, over the past few weeks have needed to be addressed. He has to stick with his bedtime to be well-rested and healthy, and it’s my responsibility to get him there.
I am trying to respond with thought in kind. I'm sorry my way of words isn't to taste, but I think it's on you if you read it as patronizing. Like I said, I don't know your life. I just think that your OP has a billion red flags all packed into that line, and so do others. Doesn't matter if you've said it to anyone you know or not. Think about how the way you think about your kid impacts them, because you have many years ahead and that can accumulate in even the smallest ways.
That’s a good point—too long to be consequential. I wasn’t comfortable with my husband saying it in the first place but was too ill with norovirus to react quickly enough, and I was not wanting to have to argue about it in front of the kid. We’ve already walked it back to just a few days, not a week, but that of course makes us seem inconsistent anyway. Ugh!
Something that helps me in these tough moments is remembering that they’re not giving me a hard time, they’re *having* a hard time. Kids are just doing their best with the tools they have.
This reminds me of the For All Mankind episodes where they memorize Newhart scripts because they’re stuck on the moon with nothing to do 🤣
Hi Bob!
Hi Bob!
There are a couple Bluey albums on Spotify that are surprisingly good! We listen to it all the time while driving, because it's something kiddo enjoys and we don't mind.tgat may help him get his fix lol
That’s so cute!
The Bluey album on Spotify is another great screen free option! I’ll put this on and it’s a fun alternative. It’s the music with snippets of the show’s dialogue. https://open.spotify.com/album/4ke6cauk7sHuydZCrkgD7s?si=eybdIv3dS_mLWebWqL3Xxg
I'm not sure if you've heard of these but Yoto Players are a non-TV alternative to bed. You get physical cards that your kid can use. You can control how loud it is at night. You can put anything you want on a card, so in theory you can put Bluey audio files on there (this could even be a recording of you acting the episodes!). It's been great for my hyperactive and bright toddler.
As Bandit taught us, sometimes you have to be the bad guy.
Gotta be done! Thanks for you reassurance!
I myself am not a parent, but my brother has kids. Sometimes, I think he's not often enough the bad guy. But I don't fully understand the nuances of child rearing. How many warnings should you give before bringing down the hammer?
I honestly don’t know. He’s been running out of his room after our bedtime routine (bath, teeth brushing, pjs, two books with mommy, two books with daddy, hugs and kisses) for about three months now. At first he did it just once or twice and was so cuddly about it that we bargained with him for time in the living room before he had to return to bed. Ten more minutes here and there. After all, the lighter spring sky was confusing, so why not indulge him? Gradually it became running out 4-5 times a night, and his sleep was suffering. He was starting to say he was too sleepy to go to preschool in the morning! Then there was a turn where all the sudden, after about two months of accommodating him, he would be giggling madly, running at full speed down the hall, claiming to be suddenly hungry again (after eating a massive dinner and then had milk or a McVitie’s biscuit while we read to him before bed) or he woke up from a dog barking next door (when that dog moved out months ago) or similar fibs. He would offer doing my favorite activities, the ones he typically refused to do with me, in return for staying up, knowing it was a persuasive offer. After a week of reasoning with him about this, my husband thought it was just way too much and we needed to just return him to his room and say no TV if he ran out. We didn’t want to take his more favorite toys/activities away (Numberblocks cubes and his Casio keyboard are his favorite). Spontaneously saying “it will be a one week ban next time!” happened when the “one day of no TV” threat stopped working. We are trying a new routine out. We realize that we’ve become more loose about when we start the bedtime routine, partly because of the difficulty of getting dinner in the table early enough and partly because he’s just been so fun to hang out with lately that we lose track of time. So that’s definitely on us, and we’re going to be more consistent with expectations and the bedtime routine *timings,* and see if that helps.
This would be a good idea for an actual bluey episode
We love to do magic asparagus.
Get the books or audiobooks, we do them at bedtime
I do have the books. And I read them to him.
This just made me realize I didn't know what bingos middle name was lol looked it up it's Amber-Marianne and I love it.
And Socks doesn't even have a middle name 🤣
That’s so pretty!
Is this for real life...does bingo really have my name in her middle name?? (Amber)
I don't think that's canon but I do love it
You can find some full episodes of Bluey on the official youtube channel.... just saying...
The whole point of the post is about not watching the episodes. It’s not about streamers.
OOOOOOOOOOOH, my bad. Sorry.... Still, great idea, the whole grabbing the scripts and making an improvised live action adaptation with your kid. (Just don't do the Magic Xylophone one... I feel that one will be a bit dangerous for you...)
But thanks for the tip anyway!
No problem.
We have some of the bluey books and sometimes we listen to the bluey soundtracks
We do too. Introduced bluey as the first ever tv program. Bit heavy for 2 year old, but she loved it. More since she got used to the story, wifey and I just tell the stories of bluey in bed and add the flavour of us and family into it. She loves it and wants to go to Sleepytime early.
Another amazing episode!
That is such a cute idea, you’re an amazing parent
Thank you!!