20 of the Least Annoying TV Shows for Kids
My 3 kids range in age from preschooler to nearly tween (3 and half to almost 9). And I’ve found that there’s almost nothing that we can watch together as a family that isn’t annoying, obnoxious or a catalyst to start at least one of them whining.
The shows that appeal to my oldest are ones like iCarly, Victorious and Shake it Up. These shows, aimed at tween girls, aren’t my thing. I have friends who love them and do things like listen to Big Time Rush in the car even when they’re alone – and then claim it was an accident. But at the moment, those shows aren’t a good fit for me and my kids.
The ones that appeal to my middle dude (age 6) are things like Power Rangers, Lego Ninjago and Kickin’ It. Notice a theme? He needs to watch less of programs that make him want to roundhouse or beg me for merchandise. And my preschooler is Dora-obsessed. That has to end now.
So I turned to the 28,000+ fabulous and brilliant moms who read Rants from Mommyland and asked them (via Facebook) what shows they thought were great for kids bigger than toddlers and younger than tweens. We got hundreds of comments, which I then tallied up. I also checked with Common Sense Media to see if there were parent or editor recommendations of shows I hadn’t seen or thought of.
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Mythbusters
(Discovery Channel) I never would have thought about this show, but was the 2nd most recommended program. It blends science, urban legends and witty hosts, and it’s something the both boys and girls can enjoy. It's also highly recommended by Common Sense Media, but for older kids.
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Word Girl
(PBS) I adore this show and so do my kids – all of them. The sensibility of this cartoon is just genius. It’s really funny and educational without being preachy or obnoxious in any way and features the best sidekick in the history of ever: Captain Huggy Face. My feelings for Captain Huggy Face are embarrassingly strong. In addition to being totally precious, he is also the BEST DANCER in the world.
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Good Luck Charlie
(Disney Channel) This was widely acknowledged as being the least annoying of all the Disney/Nick tween type of shows. There is an obnoxious younger brother who may make some questionable behavioral choices, but the show is a pretty good balance between the stuff my kids want to watch and what I want them to watch.
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Phineas and Ferb
(Disney Channel) This is hands down my favorite kids show. EVER. It’s brilliant and sweet and hilariously funny. Every time I watch an episode, I catch a new reference to literature or pop culture that I missed before. Sadly, we’ve seen every episode about 50 times and my kids are starting to sigh when I suggest we turn it on.
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Wild Kratts
(PBS Kids) Who doesn’t love the Kratt brothers? If I ever saw those guys I would hug them for an awkwardly long time and then give them both high fives. This nature and wildlife-themed cartoon (just like their past shows) is fun, quick-paced and unashamedly educational.
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Food Network
Moms recommended the most of the shows on this network, but the one most commonly suggested was Cupcake Wars. There are lots of travel-oriented shows as well, all of which are family-friendly and may even help picky eaters decide they want to be more adventurous.
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American Idol
(Fox) It’s the most popular show in the U.S. Kids everywhere are watching it and talking about on the playground. My kids asked to see it, so after prescreening it, we watched it together. My oldest loved it, the middle kid was meh and the youngest wandered off to find a snack. But we’re pretty weird. For many families, though, this is the favorite.
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Animal Planet
Shows like Dogs 101 and Meerkat Manor ranked high on parent’s recommendations. And why not? They feature adorable critters, they’re educational and some people (me) think that the more kids learn to understand and empathize with animals, the more likely they are to turn out to be compassionate, awesome grown-ups.
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Bizarre Foods
(The Travel Channel) This is another show that I never would have considered watching with my kids, but now that someone suggested it, it totally makes sense. You learn about travel, geography, cultures and totally gag-inducing food. What could be better?
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Full House
(ABC Family) I’m too old to have watched this show when it first came out. Scratch that. I was too cool to watch it as a tween and teen, and was therefore totally unprepared for how strongly my kids (especially the little one) would react to it. My girls LOVE this show. And while yes, it’s annoying and cloyingly sweet – there is absolutely nothing else objectionable about it. My kids can watch it and not absorb anything but the painfully obvious moral messages in each episode, like “don’t tell lies” or “be nice to your sister” or “don’t get drunk in middle school”. I can live with that.
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Avatar the Last Air Bender
(Nickelodeon) My son likes this show a lot. And more times than I can count, the rest of us sit down when it’s on and get totally sucked in. It was frequently mentioned by readers as being a good choice. Although it does feature fighting and violence, there are strong female characters, a broad mythology behind the story and a clear sense of right and wrong.
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How Its Made
(Discovery Channel) This show will probably go right over the heads of little guys, unless they are in the stage of asking a million questions per day. Older kids will like it as it doesn’t dumb down content, but is still easy for even elementary age kids to understand. This might be a good show to DVR and prescreen, so you can be sure that each segment is appropriate for the age and personalities of your kids.
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The Sing Off
(NBC) This singing competition has a really short season and is only one for a few weeks a year. It features singing groups (like choruses and glee choirs) from around the country and is just fun to watch. I’ve been a fan for two seasons and have never seen anything that would be objectionable for kids, either.
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Fetch with Ruff Ruffman
(PBS) This show features a competition between live action kids, as adjudicated by a cartoon dog (Ruff Ruffman). It’s clever and funny and more educational than kids realize. A good pick for a wide age-range of kids, though not easy to find in every media market.
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Lab Rats
(Disney XD) This brand new show is part sci-fi, part action-adventure and part family sitcom. The show – aimed primarily at boys - may be better than you think. Teenagers with super-powers who don’t really belong anywhere is not exactly a new concept in the sci-fi genre, but one your kids may want to watch anyway. Worth a try!
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Oceans Blue
(Planet Green) If you get the network Planet Green, this one is definitely worth checking out. Common Sense Media tapped it as an editor’s pick and describes it as awe-inspiring. Besides, if I have to watch Finding Nemo again, I’m going to lose my schmidt.
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SciGirls
(PBS) This show features regular tween girls engaging in science projects (physics, math, biology, engineering) and solving problems and having a great time. It also features some mildly annoying animation. But over all? Awesome. I think I might enjoy this show slightly more than my kids, but that’s just too bad for them.
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Majors and Minors
(The Hub) This is a great show. It’s a singing and music competition for kids (mostly tweens) that features celebrities and industry experts and mentors, just like American Idol. Unlike Idol, the kids don’t get voted off every week – and though they’re competing with each other, they work as a team. The cast is made up of real kids who are genuinely talented. And it may inspire your kid to go practice piano, without being asked.
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Shaun the Sheep
(Disney Channel) Older kids may get a little bored with this stop action animation show (from the creators of Wallace and Gromit). Or they may appreciate its brilliance. Shaun is a leader and a problem solver and very silly. The series has garnered excellent reviews and was recommended both by moms and by Common Sense Media.
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Scooby Doo
(Cartoon Network) Come on. Scooby is the best. Moms recommended him in droves. And it's good advice! How can you go wrong with Scooby?
No one knows your kids better than you, so hopefully it follows that you’re the best judge of whether these shows are a good fit for your family. Which ones do your kids like the best?
Read more from Julie at her blog Rants from MommyLand. Follow Julie on Facebook and Twitter for additional goofy nonsense at no extra charge. You can catch up on her posts for Strollerderby, too – where she is often slightly less stupid.
meh. Several of those shows are more annoying around here. Avatar and Lab rats? Ugh.
Mike the knight and Team umizoomi are much better.
Love Good Luck Charlie, mostly because it is so refreshing to see a mom on TV actually portrayed as real and normal!
My son is 5, and he absolutely ADORES How It’s Made, and it’s lesser known counterparts, How Do They Do It? and Factory Made. When they have marathons of these on the Science channel, he will sit for hours and watch. And I let him. Because it’s educational. And, Mommy may or may not need a “sanity day.”
If Captain Huggyface is your thing, might I suggest Bruno & the Banana Bunch on Netflix? Though it’s definitely geared toward the younger ones, it’s very reminiscent of Word Girl – my kids love it!!
My sister got nightmares from Scooby Doo, so it was banned when I was a child. Why did she get nightmares? Because the ghosts turned out to be real people and that was really scary to her. Now as a mom, I’m afraid to let my 3 & 6 year olds watch it!
My grandkids love watching Signing Time on PBS. If you’ve never seen Signing Time, you owe it to yourself and your kids to check it out at http://www.signingtime.com. Fun, educational, very entertaining, and adults can learn American Sign Language along with their kids.
The Mythbusters is a fav. in our house. They also host Punkin Chunkin once a year around Thanksgiving. It is a lot of fun! Adults and kids design machines to fling pumpkins as far as they can. We watch it every year now.
Great list! My son loves Scooby Doo and I find even the old one hold up pretty well. I’m totally going to check out some of the shows I hadn’t heard of. Thanks!
Are you guys even allowed to be critical of Disney/Nick shows nowadays?
Anyway, these are mostly not popular with my kids – except for Phineas&Ferb of course, and the wonderful Fetch, which sadly was cancelled.
I’d like to recommend “Penn and Teller Tell a Lie” – it’s clean (safe for kids language-wise) plus surprisingly informative and fun!
Hit Netflix for the animated Mr Bean series – VERY popular with my younger son! Sweet little cartoons.
My kids love Phineas and Ferb now. I thought it was annoying at first, but now I love it. And I know the voice of Baljeet! My kids also like Word Girl and Umizoomi. And there’s some strange show on Netflix they like, called Fishtronaut.
Thanks for the Disney heads-up, Blackorchid.
Also, don’t miss Dinosaur Train (PBS Kids).
Shannon’s comment is funny to me – Scooby Doo has helped my preschooler stop being afraid of Halloween-type things, because at the end of Scooby Doo it’s always a regular person who is just pretending to be a ghost, werewolf, etc. He had a lot of issues around Halloween with the scarier costumes and “haunted” activities, and Scooby Doo helped him get the idea of it all being pretend.
Shaun the Sheep is great because it is short! It is a good compromise when my son wants TV but I don’t want him to get sucked into a half hour of something. We can watch “a Shaun” and then turn the TV off.
My son (4) is big into Dino Dan these days. And I like it, too. Not objectionable in any way and Dan is totally nuts about dinosaurs and a bit dorky about it but all this is totally treated as cool. And it is Canadian…love those Canadians.
We watch Baby TV (a channel that broadcasts baby/kid friendly programming 24/7) in our house. Of course, my son is only 22 months old, so he’s not really ready for most of the shows on your list. But Baby TV is awesome for younger kids, and not nearly as annoying as Sprout, or even Sesame Street. Plus, there are very few real people on there (they have puppets, claymation, and animation, mostly), but if there are real people on any show, they’re kids. I like that there aren’t a bunch of adults on there. It’s a lot easier for my son to relate to the kids on the show than to a bunch of adults dancing around with puppets.
Love Phineas and Ferb and all the Discovery shows. My 9 year old also loves “Cash Cab” from the dame channel. However, Scooby gets on my nerves the way Dora and Diego do. Especially when my son starts talking like him. Then I become the Mommy Monster and it’s ON.
Yeah…we don’t watch Dora at our house…it’s just too annoying. I can’t stand the crybaby koala on Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. I absolutely hate Max and Ruby. Where are their parents? If Ruby ever listened to Max, the show would be about 2 minutes long!
I do, however, love watching the Backyardigans, Little Einsteins, and Jake & the Neverland Pirates. Backyardigans have singing and dancing (each episode has different themed music), Little Einsteins has classical music and art, Jake & the Neverland Pirates has problem solving.
Bubble Guppies and Yo Gabba Gabba are also big at our house!
My two year old daughters favorite show is bubble Guppies. It’s educational, funny and full of music. We all love the show and record it on out tevo.
I like Little Bear and Franklin for little kids. Not psychadelic and flashy and ADD-inducing… nice and mellow and sweet.
I’m shocked that there was no mention of Bubble Guppies! That one is certainly a favorite in our house. My nephew has.been entranced by it since he was five months old, and the three year-old lives it! We love it too, and find ourselves watching when there are no children to be found. Shockingly educational, and they have some cute, short, catchy songs (which my 17 month-old nephew loves to dance to)!
How is Cupcake Wars and Bizarre foods and some of the other shows for kids? Some of the things you put on here are TV channels, not TV shows. A bunch of the shows are annoying. Mythbusters? Really?
My 2 1/2 year old son is crazy about Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Special Agent Oso, Team Umizoomi, Oobi, and Yo Gabba Gabba. I cannot get him interested in Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Word World, or any of those other shows.
Too many of the shows geared toward kids on Disney and Nickelodeon these days teach them how to be rude and disrespectful toward adults. I miss the days of family oriented TV things like the TGIF lineup. In general I’m personally not a fan of the reality type tv shows. Dancing with the Stars is probably my one guilty pleasure in the genre. Unfortunately these days TV is more a baby sitter than a family adventure and from what I’ve seen, too many parents aren’t very particular about what their kids watch as long as they’re quiet.
We recently gave up on cable and have started buying or renting series on DVD. A
favorite in my house? Psych. It’s ridiculous and just a fun time for everybody. The physical comedy is what entertains the younger audiences and the adults catch the stuff that generally goes over kids heads.
Isn’t AMERICAN IDOL on too late? I like PHINEAS & FERB, WORD GIRL and WILD KRATTS – I would also add a few more PBS Kids shows like ARTHUR which teaches kids about civics and is entertaining for adults too, MARTHA SPEAKS because its so darn cute and also teaches words, THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS ALOT ABOUT THAT because even I learned a few things and DINOSAUR TRAIN which is funny because when I was a little girl I had no interest in dinos. My 3 year old girl is very girly but LOVES Buddy, Shiny, Tiny & Don and she learns a lot form it too.
Word World! It’s a beautiful world. Word World!
I’m an Avatard myself, and the whole family is sitting down together for the next installment, “The Legend of Korra”. Also, we love the new Doctor Who, found on Netflix streaming & BBC America.
I can relate to your dilemma as mine range in age from 3 to 10. My mom bought the Full House series for my girls, but the little brother (adult) is always making out with women so we put a big nix on that. Scooby was a no because I’m just not into the ghost thing. My kids have really gotten into some of the older shows like Lost in Space, Batman/Robin, I Love Lucy, and even my 3-yo thinks they’re funny. I guess it doesn’t scare them because the costumes look exactly like that-costumes. I’m over my 7-yo wanting to watch Shake It Up with my 10-yo where the girls are going on a date. She’s in 1st grade! She’s got way more to deal with before we hit the dating scene!
In my house, watching Sid the Science Kid on PBS is a must. My 4 year old loves it! Along with Phineas and Ferb.