PAW Patrol: parents love to hate it. It’s the worst! It’s so ubiquitous. It’s so annoying. It’s so bad for kids’ brains. I used to feel this way, too.

Since I’m apparently now in the business of defending TV shows that other people hate, allow me, if you will, to make my little case here for PAW Patrol.

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My kids were never supposed to watch PAW Patrol. As a new mom, I found it revolting. I never wanted them to see it, or even know about it. Nowadays, I love it; I’m a big fan, and we watch it together on the regular.

So what happened?

It started with string cheese. At their grandparents’ house, my kids were given string cheese sticks that had images of PAW Patrol characters printed on the packaging. Thus, they began to learn the different characters’ names and colors. Soon they could identify them on sight when they saw them in other locations. Putting cartoon characters on food packaging really is a genius marketing move.

My kids’ intensifying fascination with these characters from the packaging on string cheese (and diapers, and graham crackers, and kids’ shampoo, and pretty much everything else for kids), led to me at last, begrudgingly, allowing them to view clips of the show in our own home. Then, when I was in the first trimester with my fourth baby, and sick 24/7, I finally gave up the fight and just let them binge-watch full episodes on Paramount+. Just all day long: PAW Patrol!, PAW Patrol!, be there on the double!

But I hated it. I hated the lazy animation style, the skull-piercing voices, the brainless music, the sheer idiotic absurdity of the plotlines, and above all, the way my kids were so obsessed with it. Just ask the internet: they say that PAW Patrol was basically lab-created (that’s laboratory, not Labrador retriever) to hypnotize your kids and get them addicted.

What garbage. I resented it, but permitted it anyway because for a couple months there I was too sick to do much of anything at all, and by the time the sickness faded around week 20, my kids were hopelessly hooked.

As time went on, I occasionally tried to banish PAW Patrol from our house, thinking it was in my kids’ best interest. I’d pack up all the plastic toy pups and their plastic vehicles, the plastic cups and plastic placemats and all the plastic merch and chuck it in a plastic trash bag and hide it in the basement because I didn’t have the heart to just throw it away entirely.

“From now on, we will only watch wholesome shows like Little Bear and Puffin Rock,” I told myself firmly. “If I just never show them PAW Patrol again, never buy any more PAW Patrol shit and never breathe another word about it from this moment forth, they have to forget about it at some point, right? From this day on, we will be a proper old-fashioned Catholic family, cleansed of the stains of all that worldly garbage!”

Inevitably, the merch would come back out several weeks or days later, because my kids asked for it and I am a softie.

Recently, I got sick of this cycle, and decided to just let go ahead and let them have their beloved PAW Patrol.

Why? What happened?

I think the biggest factor in this decision was my realization that my oldest is about to turn six, and pretty soon, she won’t even be interested in PAW Patrol anymore. She will outgrow it, probably within a year or so. My nephew, who’s only nine months older than she is, is already over PAW Patrol, and on to more mature six-year-old things. Those days will soon be upon me. And it’s actually heartbreaking: the passage of time, how quickly your baby grows up. I’ll wake up tomorrow and none of my kids will care about PAW Patrol anymore. And I’ll look back on these days and wish for just one more minute of their precious innocence.

Because that’s what PAW Patrol is. It’s innocent. I mean, come on: it’s a show about superhero puppies. If you actually sit down and watch it, you will see just how innocent it is. The music, the animation, the way the characters dress and talk: it’s all very childish, very clean and simple. It lacks the glossy flashiness and Hollywoodesque aspirations toward tweenhood that you see in something like Super Kitties (which I abhor, and nipped that obsession in the bud without a trace of guilt) or KPop Demon Hunters. It also lacks the purely hypnotic, mindless, brain-numbing singsong quality of something like Cocomelon. PAW Patrol is just simple, colorful, back-to-basics animation with childlike stories and dialogue. There’s nothing sinister, nothing suggestive of anything more mature, and the “jokes” are painfully simple; that’s exactly why kids age out of it around six or seven.

And the stories in PAW Patrol are all about helping people. That’s the whole gist of the show: cooperation is fun, you can do hard things, and helping others is cool. Literally what is the issue?

“Lab created to hijack your kids’ brains and stupefy them” – blah blah, enough with that. Sure, it’s not high quality edifying stuff, but PAW Patrol isn’t going to make good kids bad. Like most worldly pleasures, PAW Patrol can be enjoyed responsibly, in moderation. My kids are not iPad kids. They have never owned a tablet. They love reading books, drawing, playing pretend, and going outside; they’re decently well-behaved; and all of them are highly intellectually advanced for their ages. And they also happen to love PAW Patrol.

So, I’m not convinced that all of the paranoia about PAW Patrol “ruining our kids’ minds” isn’t just a bunch of tin foil hat-type blathering. I really think people love to hate things that are popular. Back in the days when novels were a recent innovation, people thought those were brainrot and a waste of time, too. Probably thirty years from now, PAW Patrol will be considered vintage and cool and “crunchy” the way Little Bear is now. Hating PAW Patrol is just as much a trend as the show itself; change my mind. Being rational: there’s simply not sufficient reason to banish PAW Patrol entirely.

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Admittedly though, my change of heart about PAW Patrol was not entirely rational. My decision was based, about 75, maybe 80 percent, on emotion.

For one, there was the aforementioned realization that my sweet babies are growing up quickly, and all too soon will no longer care a whit about PAW Patrol. You ever feel homesick for a place while you’re already there?

And for two: after a year to eighteen months or so of PAW Patrol being part of our lives, it’s gradually become, well, just that: a part of our lives. It’s weird. In the beginning, PAW Patrol felt to me like this malignant force that encroached upon my family from without. But now, for better or for worse, it has become part of us, woven into the fabric of our family life. And I like our life. The citizens of Adventure Bay have become good friends of mine, by now.

“You’re just being a lazy mom, Mith! If you really cared about your kids’ well-being, you wouldn’t show them this filth at all, much less let it infiltrate your lives to such an extent.”

Ah, the “lazy mom” accusation. Yes, this one gets thrown at moms on the internet all the time, whenever they have the audacity to try to make life easier. I honestly think people just hate moms and want them to suffer (and sometimes it’s moms who hate on other moms in this way, which imo just betrays a very-thinly-veiled self-loathing and a deep frustration with their own lives). As moms, we are, believe it or not, actually allowed to choose the easy way sometimes. Like most things, it’s not black and white (“giving screen time at all means you’re a failure!” “You don’t love your kids if you don’t cook them three meals a day from scratch!” etc.); it’s a matter of moderation. “Lazy” because sometimes I want my kids to sit still and be quiet so that I can give one of them a bath, or clean the house or, God forbid, sit down and drink a cup of coffee or something? Sure, why not. Call me lazy if you want. My kids are happy, healthy, intelligent, and loved; I’m solo parenting and homeschooling them (four five and under) on a tight budget, with no village around me, but, sure, go off I guess.

Not trying to say that I have it harder than anyone else. Parenting is hard, no matter what your situation. This is not the suffering olympics. PAW Patrol makes things a bit more fun and easy at times. And as far as I can see it does no harm. So try again to explain to me why it’s so bad.

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Finally, just for fun: being a Catholic mom and a PAW Patrol mom, I’ve taken the liberty of assigning a patron saint to each of the pups:

Chase: St. Michael the Archangel, the Prince of the Heavenly Host and defender against demons.

Skye: St. Joseph of Cupertino, obviously: famous for levitating during prayer.

Rocky: St. Joseph the Worker: quiet, responsible, happy to be in the background, good with tools.

Marshall: St. Lawrence, who was a comedian and, like Marshall, associated with fire.

Zuma: St. Brendan the Navigator, famous for sailing across oceans and exploring the world.

Rubble: St. Thomas Aquinas: bit of a counterintuitive choice, maybe, but Aquinas was a chunky fellow who was nicknamed “the dumb ox,” so I think he might actually identify with Rubble the most out of all the pups.

Is PAW Patrol a good Catholic show? No, of course not. It’s very secular. In their holiday special, they even said some cheesy line like “the real meaning of Christmas is giving!” – thankfully, my five-year-old heard that and exclaimed “no, the real meaning of Christmas is the Birth of Jesus!” Which led to a good conversation about how we need to share the Gospel with those who haven’t heard it. See? It may not be a good Catholic show, per se, but it can be part of a good Catholic life.

That’s the thing. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just (if you’re a toddler parent in 2026 who doesn’t literally live under a rock) a part of life.

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I imagine one day when I’m old and gray and an empty nester, I’ll be sitting alone in my clean, quiet living room, reminiscing, and I’ll look around at the emptiness and lack of clutter and toys, and sigh, and pick up the remote with my withered, liver-spotted hand and switch on some PAW Patrol, just for old time’s sake, and probably sing softly along with the songs, PAW Patrol!, PAW Patrol!, in my creaky lonely old-lady voice: be there on the double! And I like to think that I won’t have too many regrets.