About a month or so ago, the French made a sweeping move to help offset developmental disabilities by banning television programming aimed at children under 3. Always keen to be seen as global trendsetters, the French government said networks such as Baby First and shows like Teletubbies were detrimental to the development of children, including the stunting of attention spans and the ability to vocalize.

My daughter, Amelia, and son, Finn, like to watch the Baby First network. I would like to let the French Minister of Arts and Culture know that in addition to that, my daughter also speaks English tres bien, merci, as well as basic French and Spanish with a smattering of Chinese and Japanese thrown in for good measure, and she would dismiss this claim with a hearty wave of her hand and say “Au revoir, madame.”

Although, I can see their point. The thought is that the television, especially in America, has become some what of a babysitter for children who are not in school just yet. My wife, as main care giver, however, does not break the rule of letting the kids watch their favorite shows unattended.

When we had kids, I was amazed, and a little disgusted these shows existed. I thought it was strange that TV was being developed by adults for babbling babies that couldn’t even speak. The cartoons and kids shows today aren’t like the ones when I was a kid. Tom and Jerry and Scooby Doo are stuck on Cartoon Network and there aren’t any shows like SilverHawks or G.I. Joe. In the case of G.I. Joe, by the way, I always found its portrayal of war disenchanting. In a flurry of blue and red laser fire, Duke or any number of characters could run through these battlefields in a swarm of lasers and never once did anyone get hurt. Parachutes were always available, even on helicopters where the blades were right above their heads. Of course, they did have PSAs at the end - “Knowing is Half the Battle” you know?

TV has become a lot more educational and less battle heavy. Diego and Dora aren’t shooting laser pistols, and I’ve never seen Wubbzy throw a grenade. Whole networks are dedicated to these shows, such as Noggin, a product of Viacom, which argulably is trying to capture children into its empire so they can move up from Dora to Spongebob to Degrassi, which is on the N - the hip junior high version - to its drunken frat boy network MTV. Noggin, however, is pretty cool right now.

Before each show, the network lets you know what kind of fundamental learning aspects the show has, such as plot development, cognitive skills and inter-personal relationships. Some of this stuff I didn’t even know we needed to know. The shows teach children how to relate to their worlds and solve problems.

In the case of the French-banned Baby First Network, owned and developed by media overseer Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (think Fox), the shows are geared at my children’s age group. The shows teach colors, shapes, counting, art and music. One of Amelia’s favorite shows on this network is the Notekins, six differently colored people who looked like they lead marching bands that represent the music scale. While I think the purple one looks oddly like Hitler (my wife tells me I’m crazy), the little guys hop around searching for different instruments. Amelia likes the instruments the most and the little songs at the end, which she slowly saunters to or shakes depending on the tempo.

Television is by no means meant to be a babysitter and damage can likely come from watching too much of it. However, I can’t discredit its value, even if the Doodlebops or the Notekins or Franklin annoy me. Amelia does not measure her days in shows, but she likes her little time to speak Spanish with Dora or Chinese with Kai-Lan or jump around with Wubbzy and Yo Gabba Gabba. Finn goes along but if Blue’s Clues comes on, you can find him shaking and twisting to the theme song on the tube before he goes off to roam, perhaps to find those blue paw prints in our house.

All I can say is at least the TV is not teaching them running through a field of laser fire is okay.