Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood: Won't You Come Along?

 The series, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, is a series based off Mister Rogers Neighborhood, where young Daniel Tiger invites young preschoolers ages 2-6 to go about their day with him helping them develop social and emotional skills. Through observational viewing, young viewers and their parents get invited to the neighborhood of Make Believe, where they get to go on Adventures with Daniel, experiencing day to day situations and encounters much like how they do everyday as well. These day-to-day experiences include conflict with friends, experiencing something new, or learning how to cope with certain emotions. By watching Daniel and friends lead by example, the show’s success is mainly based off of viewers following after his example after watching the show. 

In a quantitative research done by Texas Tech University, it is said that “127 preschoolers and one of each of their parents in our study. Over a two-week period, we had some of the kids watch Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood for 30 minutes each day, while some of the kids watched 30 minutes of a nature documentary each day”(Rassmussen, 2016, p1). Between the two groups, the children that watched Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood “had higher levels of empathy, were better at recognizing emotions, and were more confident in social situations than the kids who watched the nature show”(Rassmussen,2016,p1).  Within the qualitative study, it was known that the only way the show would be very effective is if parents were to watch alongside the children. Thus meaning that although the show may captivate a young child’s attention to help them familiarize things with a character, the information being taught will not be as effective without a parent present.

With the show’s popular success, it goes to show that without parent involvement with a child’s viewing of television the observational viewing may or may not be as effective with a parent present. Being one of my personal favorite children’s television shows, I believe that the qualitative study results do prove a point, especially if children as young as 2, do not even understand completely what may or may not be going on in the show.