My Daughter who is now 2, 1/2 years old says to me, “Mummy, can I open the fridge?” I say, no. She asks several more times before I say “do not say that again.”
She places a hand on the fridge and says “Abre?”
Fair enough right? Not only has Dora assisted my spanish learning daughter to outsmart me but she has also succeeded in preparing my girl for one of the biggest changes in her life. A Brother.
A well timed discovery in the Nick Jnr series was when Dora’s archeologist mother was expecting TWINS! Now to some this may sound silly but to anyone who has a Dora loving youngster you know that if Dora says, sings or rhymes it, it’s gospel. So when Dora raced home through the Spooky forest & the nut farm to get to her house we knew we were on to a good thing.
Some how this 20 minute story about Dora, her slightly disturbing group of talking exotic animals and her mothers speedy & effortless twin childbirth explained the whole situation in just the right way to not only make it ok, but to be the most exciting thing ever. It prepared her very nicely.
The result: a little girl who understands her brother is a baby and needs help whilst somehow not resenting the time he takes away from her with us alone.
If you do have a little one with any interest in Dora or Diego and need some help preparing them for the big change of a younger sibling, invest in the Dora enterprise and use it to your advantage. You may wake up every morning singing “I’m gonna be a big sister…” but when you come out from the kitchen to make sure your older isn’t feeding the baby snails and find her on her knees holding his hand and smiling instead, it’ll all be worth it.
