Netflix: saving parents’ sanity one Disney movie at a time

I think I’m done with TV. Children’s TV channels get switched on in our house as soon as the child is awake and don’t go off until she’s gone to bed. She knew what the remote control did before she knew what her boppy was for. And she absolutely and utterly rules the tellybox in our house. Yes, sometimes as parents, we suck.

As soon as an ad break comes on, the toddler points to the remote and says ‘ugh’. This means, Put something on immediately, I don’t do ad breaks. So of course, because I cater to her EVERY NEED I pick up the remote and start flicking, lest her saucer eyes be left cartoonless for more than seconds.

The problem with TV (Sky in this case) is that every single channel takes a break at the same time. They do this so that you have no choice but to be bombarded with their marketing warfare. That’s annoying when you’re there by yourself – but you can always take out your phone, for some further interesting screen time; it’s actually dangerous when you’re with the toddler.

If you haven’t supplied a new cartoon (has to be one of her favourites though, she’s picky) within a minute you will be subjected to more ‘ughs’ and and a tight clutch of the arm. If you haven’t picked up the remote in the first place, you can expect a sharp whack of said remote to the head. These ad breaks happen five times per programme. That’s a long gauntlet of remote control dodging.

On Saturday afternoon, after a spout of cleaning and playing and general family-ness, we were looking for something to do. And then I remembered.

Frozen.

Netflix.

Fire lit.

No ads.

Heaven.

And it was. We got up to sing the songs and dance a bit round the room. There were sweets. And juice. And peace. Beautiful peace with no screaming ad breaks about shoes that unfold with the touch of a wand (seriously).

It’s a pity Frozen is only free on Netflix for a month. I reckon we should gang together and demand a review.

WE WANT FROZEN. WE WANT FROZEN.

If they don’t decide to leave it with us though there’s two others things we’ll be doing in this house.

One is playing the flick through all the children’s characters for many minutes at a time game.  Have you played it yet? This is where you go into ‘search by character’ and the toddler is drawn to the screen and screams when she sees something she recognises. OOOH! AAAGH! EEEE! That was Peppa, Timmy (the sheep) and strangely, the Smurfs.

The other thing we’ll be doing is watching one of the Toy Story movies. I’m schooling her in the cartoon world that I grew up –  one where you watched the same movie over and over again until you knew every line, every scene change and could lay back in the pure comfort of familiarity.

The reason we watched the same movie over and again is because we only got one video at Christmas and that was pretty much it till next year. (That and anything else you could record over your mother’s Coronation Street). The toddler has plenty of choice. Too much choice.

But I can’t risk those few minutes where she decides if she’s going to like something or not. She’s holding a three and half pound Sky remote over my head for God’s sake. So I stick with what we know and we’ve watched Frozen seven times now, interspersed by three Toy Stories. It’s going well. And it looks like we might be moving onto the Apple TV remote  now. Tiny in comparison.

I’m a member of the Netflix Stream Team and receive a free Netflix package for review purposes