TLDR: looking for a way to share spiderman with young children without violence or inducing ADD in child.
I have a 4 year old that I have pretty successfully sheltered from media. She’s watched some stuff - but think PBS instead of cocomelon - slower paced and no cuts every 5 seconds and noises / explosions / annoying blippi people. I think that’s the right choice and we’re doing well with it.
However, her friends, mostly boys, at day care all like to play spiderman. She gets enough about it to play along in the game. But she has never seen media about spiderman. And hasnt watched anything with violence - thats scary for her.
I’d like to share the character with her to help her with fitting in - while sticking to our media rules, in a kid friendly way. My first thought was comic books - but even those are pretty advanced for a 4 year old. I could edit down one of the spiderman movies into a few clips and show that.
But - would appreciate your suggestions. Do you have any spiderman books / media that you think are age appropriate?
There is a current Spiderman show for young kids. Spidey rather than Spiderman. I think it’s on Disney plus, but I don’t subscribe. My son loves it. He’s a little older but started watching at that age. It’s not violent but has some conflict. It also has positive female heros.
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/127635-spidey-and-his-amazing-friends
My daughters loved this show, too, and so do a lot of the kids I’ve met. Definitely recommend if you are looking for something Spiderman for little kids. There are also books based on the show if you would rather have books.
I hate the idea though. It’s like that Young Jedi Adventures show, which is clearly intended to be “Star Wars for kids.”
“Star Wars for kids” when I was a kid was Star Wars. Sure, there are shows now which are not appropriate for kids, but Return of the Jedi came out when I was six and I loved it all. As did all of my friends. I’m just not sure why they need something extra kiddie.
But then there seems to be this idea now that shows for kids have to also be basically all-kids. I grew up with so many shows for kids with a ton of adults in them, even adults hosting them like Mr. Rogers and Captain Kangaroo. I mentioned Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends above, which was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid. They were able to make it pretty damn close to what you would see in a comic book without the more adult stuff. Spidey and his friends were all adults- college students. As far as I know, there were no kids in the show as major characters. Just like Star Wars. Just like He-Man. Just like G.I. Joe.
So I don’t get it.
A 4 year old has a different attention span and different understanding than a 6 year old or an 8 year old. They are going to make shows that cater for them. They may as well use existing characters in an age appropriate way.
I’ve 2 kids and the older of the 2 still struggles with the pacing of spider man movies geared more towards 10-12 year Olds, even if it’s not particularly inappropriate as he’s just a year or two younger.
Star wars is for kids, as is spider man but they need to have the attention span and emotional maturity that a 4 year old doesn’t have. It’s a gentle introduction which probably allows them to appreciate the real thing a bit earlier than they otherwise would…
We also need to accept that some of the things we liked as kids won’t be like by our kids. Star wars for kids was Ewoks: the battle for endoe, when I was a kid. It’s awful.
I mentioned the fact that ROTJ came out when I was six to suggest that I had been watching it long before that. I have a very vague memory of playing Star Wars in pre-school.
I agree, some things we liked as kids will not be liked by our kids. But that is also not a reason to think that every bit of programming for children has to be about children. It’s okay for kids to enjoy adventures about adults. For one thing, it lets them dream about adventures they might have one day when they grow up.
I mean even Disney realizes that. Many of their heroes (the human ones anyway) are, at the youngest, late teens. Some are older than that.
See if your library has any spidey graphic novels? https://books.disney.com/book/team-spidey-does-it-all/
My almost 4-year-old started watching cartoons a few months ago. She has about 20 min of screen time a day max, all slow, wholesome stuff. She LOVES SpiderMan because I got her DUPLO and LEGO characters and we play with them all the time. I got her a Spidey book but she didn’t like it at all - it’s very shallow and there’s no moral to the story. I showed her the title sequence from SpiderMan in the 1970s I believe and she really liked it
Not a parent (saw your post on the all feed and wandered in), so you’ll have to screen a few episodes to make sure the content fits what your looking for, but I know Disney has a Spiderman show for young audiences as part of their Disney Jr. lineup called Spidey and His Amazing Friends. Can’t say I’ve seen it myself, but I’d be willing to bet it’s most likely where your daughter’s classmates are encountering the characters, so it might be a good spot to start your search. That said, while YouTube might have clips and snipits from the show, I’d avoid it like the plague, any local library with their salt will almost certainly have a selection of DVDs for kids that you could borrow (and failing that there’s also Disney+).
Actually, the library idea got me thinking… Given the popularity of the show, there’s almost certainly going to be tie-in kids books if you wanted to go that route. Probably not board books, but definitely something with pictures that you could sit down and read tougher.
I have a similar thing with my kid and is be very interested in what you come up with.
I was thinking of starting with the old cartoons, however I don’t remember much about them and how appropriate they are for such a young child.
The early elementary boys I’ve cared for have had learn-to-read Spiderman books. I tried to hunt down the ones they’ve had and couldn’t find the exact titles, but I did find an example.
(theirs didn’t have the sound bar)
There’s a junior DC heroes television show which includes a little bit of heroistic violence yet whose dialogue focuses mostly on social and emotional themes. It is aimed for the preschool set. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidey_and_His_Amazing_Friends
As other people are saying, start with the cartoons. I don’t know that any of them are super violent, but the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends show was made in the 1980s when they clamped down on kids shows showing anything they thought was even remotely inappropriate, so there’s definitely that one.
Also, I don’t care if the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon has a catchy song, it’s a stupid song. The Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends intro music is awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA3rTcX46b4
(Really stupid super-team though. Maybe don’t team up the people who can kill each other if they get too close to each other? Half the bad guys were already prepared for that before they got there.)
The spiderman cartoons really aren’t super violent. I watched them around that age.
