Even though they have a hard time understanding that Dora The Explorer can’t actually hear them, kids can be surprisingly wily negotiators. Try to convince a 5-year-old that he needs to put away his toys after playing with them, and he’ll deflect by asking if Grandma went to heaven after she died, thereby sidelining the original discussion and also putting you in a position to lie and/or buy him something to smooth over the dreams you’ve just shattered. And if you try to give them the hard line on bedtime, those pint-sized Henry Kissingers will outline a 10-point plan for why they should get to stay up, and incidentally, why ice cream actually helps calm them down.
Netflix hears you, weary parents, and wants to help with something other than Supernanny episodes. The streaming company knows that, when it comes to turning in for the night, your kids will organize a sit-in and chant “No justice, no sleep” until you relent. That’s why, according to Mashable, Netflix has just released a series of animated videos that will help you broker a nighttime peace with your kids. The premise is as follows: parents can now bargain with their children by offering to let them watch one of three episodes in the new Dinotrux 5 Minute Favorites series before shuffling them off to bed. Of course, when the time comes, the little ones will probably counter by asking to watch just one more episode and the cycle will repeat itself not unlike before, but at least this way everyone gets to see the dinosaur 4x4s.
Netflix has also included a chart to help parents identify their kids’ negotiation tactics, but with handy pop-culture references so that you can be sure you and your child are using the same terms.
We should point out that this is just giving parents another stalling technique, but Mashable has a more pressing caveat. The publication cites a Nielsen study that found that kids ages 2-5 are averaging 32 hours a week in front of a TV (or laptop), while those who are 6-11 are averaging 28 hours a week. And those numbers are at an eight-year high, but who really wants to sing their kid to sleep anymore? It’s far better to let them grow drowsy by watching Dinotrux, so they can dream of Dinotrux, and then wake fully rested to ask you to buy them some Dinotrux.