Who’s the Leader of the Club?

It all started when Batman and the Joker began bathing together.

Livvie had been engaging in some pretend play, mostly feeding her baby doll or changing her diaper etc. Sometimes she’d pretend items were certain foods and mimic eating. All of this was very good from a developmental standpoint. I had been waiting, though, for the day when she would use her little action figures and such to have pretend adventures so I could really get involved too.

I was sitting at my computer one day, and Livvie placed a small plastic container next to my monitor and placed her tiny Batman and Joker figures in it. She looked at me and told me that Batman and Joker were taking a shower.

I said, “Not very likely, kid, but go to it.”

Batman and the Joker ended up taking a whole bunch of showers together. They also started going for walks. She’d pick up Batman in her hand, direct him at Joker, and say, “Hi Joker!” Joker would turn and say, “Hi Batman! Let’s go for a walk!” and then they’d happily prance across the kitchen table.

Really. They pranced. Her heart is going to be broken when she discovers The Truth.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Disney for decades. The commercial nature of the company goes right up my nose. The fact that they were one of the first major companies to extend full benefits to same sex domestic partners delighted me. This habit of almost all mothers dying or already being dead in their feature films pisses me off (leaving The Lion King out of it. But that was Hamlet. So they had no choice). I enjoy the hell out of most of the movies anyway (except The Little Mermaid, because dammit, no woman needs the love of a man to find her voice. Asshats). However, I NEVER liked Mickey. Mickey bored the daylights out of me, and his voice worked my nerves terribly. COULD NOT STAND HIM.

One day, though, I got tired of Super Why and Yo Gabba Gabba, the only two TV shows Livvie enjoyed, and I turned on Playhouse Disney. She was ignoring it until Mickey Mouse Clubhouse came on. Then she sat still for 30 minutes. She was completely smitten. “Ickey Bouse,” now properly pronounced, became her new BFF. I realized this on the day when she gathered all of her Batman and Joker guys, built a structure with blocks, and told me they were going to Mars. She designated those figures as Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and Daisy. She only had five, so there was no Pluto. I thought that was great, but then one day she asked me to tie a peanut to a helium balloon. I thought, “ok, whatever,” and did so. She told me the peanut was Daisy, who gets carried away by a bunch of balloons in one episode.

Ok, while very creative, that’s just downright sad.

So I got online and found a set of six resin figures for $10. Even though Daisy is designed badly, and her left leg keeps snapping off requiring Super Glue treatments, it’s probably the best purchase I ever made for her imagination. She reenacts entire episodes with them, and they go on mad adventures every day. I DVR every episode that Disney shows, and guess what?

This is not our childhood Mickey.

I have laughed out loud watching this show, because the writers clearly know that parents are about to slice off their own heads while watching preschool programming. There are throwaway lines all over the place that go right past my kid but give me the giggles.

She is learning like a fiend. She has no idea she’s learning. This show has taught her an amazing amount of different concepts in a very few short months. Her speech has exploded. Her pronunciation is crazy. Math. Physics. Spacial relations. Vocabulary. Dancing. It’s nuckin’ futs. She memorizes complete dance routines and does them correctly while singing the songs that go with them. Her memory is now out of control. She can sit and tell me the details of an entire episode, complete with dialogue. She learned to count backwards, and last night when my stomach growled she laughed and said, “Mommy’s hungry.”

Playhouse Disney has no commercials. Due to this Livvie doesn’t bug me for toys, because she has no idea they exist until I find something for her that I think will help her out. I decorated “her” bathroom completely in Mickey and friends in the hope that it would inspire her to actually use the potty. That was a failed idea, but she sure does love that bathroom. She had been very into puzzles when younger, but she lost interest. I found a slew of Mickey Mouse jigsaw puzzles at Dollar Tree before Christmas, and now she puts them together constantly. By herself. When she completes them she asks me to tell her she did a good job. I always do.

She asked me the other day to redo her bedroom in Mickey Mouse instead of Power Puff Girls though. I told her she could forget that idea until her birthday.

This show finally got her to understand the concept of Santa Claus, it made her completely crazy about snow, and she’s now desperate to start ice skating. She’ll have to make do with roller skates. Sorry, this is the South. She somewhat understood the concept of friends before watching, but now she totally gets the idea of friendship and loyalty. Why you should be nice to your friends. How to feel compassion if someone is down in the dumps. That art is art no matter what it looks like; it’s the intent that matters. How to be helpful if someone is in a jam. Helping is a Big Deal for her now. When I need to fix something she tells me to get a Mouseketool. I have a zippered case full of them. Everything is a Mouseketool now, and when I cook I ask her which Mouseketool I need for each process and she tells me. She tells me that food smells delicious. One day she told me she simply MUST have the recipe. She’s constantly surprising me now. I won’t have picked up on something, and she’ll say something that makes me do a double-take until I see it in an episode.

In fact, she just told me to draw a hexagon.

Rich’s mom sent her a Christmas card with Mickey on it this year, and when she opened it her face changed. I said, “What’s wrong, honey?” and she handed it to me and said, “Mickey’s pants are backwards.” I looked, and she was right. The white buttons were on his rear end.

Little snot.

My problem here is that this is what excites her imagination more than anything, but it’s my only weapon when she’s misbehaving. If she screws up, then there’s no Mickey. It actually makes me sad, because she’s not just getting entertainment value out of it. Her brain is going berserk.

So I’d really like to thank the folks at Disney for this. Think what you want about them as a Beast of Consumerism; hate on them all you like. We watch each show together, and both of us participate completely. It’s made all of the difference in the world.