If You’re Watching TV With Your Toddler, Put on Something Actually Good

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Not too long ago, our toddler started doing something weird. Where it came from was a total mystery. If my wife or I happened to doze off on the couch or something, he’d banzai drop onto our chests, knocking the wind out of us. Then he’d scream, “Hey, wake up!” two inches from our faces, scrunch his eyes tight, and violently bounce up and down. As far as alarm clocks go, it was nothing if not effective.

My wife and I were completely befuddled. We spent weeks trying to figure out where he might’ve learned this ritual; our Google searches yielding nothing. When we’d finally made peace that we’d likely never know, the answer materialized before us one morning while eating breakfast in front of the TV: It was a scene from My Neighbor Totoro, the 1988 Hayao Miyazaki film, which we’d put on regularly, especially on Saturdays when the weather was bad and we were stuck indoors. A little girl named Mei (voiced in the English dub by Elle Fanning) jumps on her dad’s chest and screams, “Hey, wake up!” before closing her eyes and bouncing up and down. Somehow the particulars of that moment had eluded us, while remaining deeply influential to our three-year-old, who thought it a funny way to rouse his parents who were up to their ears in sleep debt. My wife and I looked at each other and started cracking up.

We’re not as militant as other parents about screen time, although we do adhere to a few loose rules dictated by a simple logic: mostly, no brain rot. We’ve never let Cocomelon invade our algorithms, for example, although I understand the temptation to just throw something on to buy a moment of calm. Whenever we do turn on the TV for him, we learned that it’s best to avoid anything too smooth-brained and to try and make it something we would also enjoy watching. Oftentimes that’s meant a Miyazaki film.

It started via advice from another dad friend: He told me that if their daughter got up at 5:30 a.m., they’d pour her a bowl of cereal, put on Kiki’s Delivery Service (about a young witch who becomes a small-business owner), and then he’d try to sneak back to bed. So we started with Kiki. Then our kid developed a fondness for Ponyo (about a fish who aspires to be human), and then Totoro. Lately our son’s been really into Spirited Away, particularly the character No-Face, a wandering ghost with an insatiable appetite who attaches its presence to a little girl. It’s a dreamy, intense film, maybe even a bit scary, but our kid isn’t bothered. Whenever No-Face appears onscreen, he likes to point and say, “That’s No-Face.”