For those of you that don't know, Dora the Explorer is one of the current kid crazes. It is an animated television series aimed at pre-school age children. The main character, Dora, is a seven-year-old Latina girl who goes on adventures with her special backpack, map, and monkey named Boots. Children are encouraged to respond to Dora throughout the show as she problem solves teaching kids math, music and other concepts you would see on any kid show. But what sets it apart for me is that Dora also teaches kids words and phrases in Spanish.
Like any phenomenon in the children's world, marketers have taken Dora to the extreme. You can find pretty much anything with the Dora characters on them. But until recently, I thought the show itself was pretty innocent.
On Dora's show there is a character named Swiper (a fox) that likes to steal things. Dora often catches him in the act and stands with feet apart, arm extended, waving her palm at Swiper saying, "Swiper, No swiping." This saves the day as she has caught Swiper in the act.
This weekend, while we were at the wedding and catching up with friends, their almost 2-year-old boy was playing on the stairs near us with his grandma's cell phone. A few minutes later, grandma came to look for the cell phone and asked him if she could have it back. The little boy, immediately stood up and went into the "Swiper, no swiping" pose to fend off his grandma! A modern day version of "mine!" Grandma finally gave up and asked him if he wanted to go with her downstairs, and happily he left with her, cell phone still clutched in his little hand.
So parents out there with children watching Dora, beware!
9 comments:
Oops...Swiper, No Swiping doesn't mean 'mine.' Watch Dora sometime and you will understand.
Well Mr.- or Ms. Anonymous, Shannon HAS watched Dora and I'm pretty sure she does understand what it means. The thing that made the story blog worthy was that this cute little kid was twisting the originally well-intended message of "don't steal" to mean "mine" in this situation. He was using the "oh no, don't steal!" pose to fend off his grandma!
weirdness: I wanted to visit my friend Josh's blog Durias Delight so I googled it and was impressed to see it pop up in the first spot. Then I was curious how our blog would fare in a google search, which led me to discover that this post about Dora was reposted at another blog dedicated exclusively to Dora.
Check it out here: http://dora-the-explorer.thisiswicked.com/2007/12/11/swiper-no-swiping/
I have no clue who this person is! Do they just trawl the internet every day and post anything written about Dora??
oooo, it just occured to me that maybe Mr. (or Ms.) Anonymous-pants above might be the culprit!
Eh, he doesn't know that the phone is a toy or not... to him it was completely relevant to ask grandma not to swipe what he was playing with.
Come on people, it's supposed to be funny! I know that the kid doesn't know if it is a toy or not, but isn't it humorous that he transferred what he learned on Dora to don't take what I have, even if what I have is not mine.
I guess it would be humorous if it wasn't my nephew. I suppose I took it a bit personally, since he is family. -Angie
Angie,
Thanks for letting me know it was you! I am really sorry if I offended you or anyone else in your family. Brian and I really thought it was one of the cutest things we had seen in awhile, which is why I decided to blog about it. I guess that is the danger of non-personal communication (email, blogging, etc.), your intention doesn't always come across. I thought leaving names out would prevent anyone from being upset about it. Thanks for being honest with us.
Phew! I am glad you aren't offended! I was so stressed out last night that I came across as rude, I read and re-read what I said and couldn't figure out how you would take it. You definitely don't need to apologize! If it was any other kid, I wouldn't have thought about it for another second! Cheers! -Angie
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