'Barney & Friends' is a good educational show for kids, plain and simple. After reading the reviews on this page, I feel I must respond to some of the comments, many of which were made by folks who obviously jumped on the anti-Barney bandwagon without actually watching the show first.
First, in regard to the common complaint that Barney doesn't teach kids about any feelings other than happiness: Do you think kids today need to be taught about sadness, anger, violence, or fear? Is there not enough of that in their lives already? Kids aren't immune to life and they're lives are more than what they see on a TV show. The 30 minutes of pure unadulterated happiness exhibited by Barney and his friends in most episodes is an appealing contrast to the bleak stress-filled real world many kids are exposed to for the other 23 1/2 hours of the day. So many kids live in poverty or in dysfunctional or abusive families, or both, and they constantly hear about death and destruction radiating out from every corner of the globe. Fortunately, many kids can turn on PBS and see happy optimistic puppets telling them how wonderful life can be; perhaps it evens things out a bit in a child's impressionable mind.
To say Barney only teaches happiness isn't true anyway, there are several episodes that are solely dedicated to dealing with negative feelings like being sad, mad, scared or embarrassed, and how it's okay to feel these emotions. Granted, the children on the show are happy most of the time, but why shouldn't they be? It's a 30 minute kiddie show, should they all dress up in black veils and mope around like a bunch of goths? They are trying to make their audience, children age 2-6 years old, feel happy.
Secondly, to address the notion that Barney does all the work and imagining, thus setting a bad example for kids: This shows you haven't watched the show because Barney is a figment of the children's imaginations, and therefore all of Barney's ideas are their ideas. We see the fantasy from their imagination's perspective.
I thought for sure I'd heard it all when it came to putting down Barney and similar shows, but I was wrong. Now people are insulting kiddie shows for being too imaginative. I keep reading idiotic comments like 'these kids are seeing a big talking purple dinosaur, are they snorting PCP or something?!! That's going to scar them for life!!" Those types of comments might have been slightly humorous 25 years ago, maybe. But now this attitude has become so commonplace that people are seriously holding a show's creativity against it. For instance, a friend of mine who has a 4 year old son refused to let him watch the Teletubbies because it was, and I quote, "bizarre and too Orwellian". (!) Gimme a break. That's almost as silly as another reviewer's claim that Barney disrespects his preschool audience by talking down to them. That's so ridiculous, I'm not even going to respond to it other than to say, that's just silly.
Let 'Barney & Friends' be what it is: a simple sweet children's show that teaches young kids moral lessons while entertaining them with catchy songs and brightly colored dinosaurs. It's silly to expect anything different from a show that caters to such a young demographic. And next time, watch more than two minutes of a show before you submit a review for it. ~Darlene
