Bluey Lost the Baby Race, And It’s Ok

I remember where I was the first time I saw it. I was lodging in a room at the Embassy Suites in Arlington, Virginia, with my husband and our three-year-old son. We were taking a big risk on a family vacation to the place where Mommy and Daddy met and got married, but traveling anywhere with our son was more difficult than you might think. He was exhibiting as-yet-undiagnosed developmental delays, and massive changes in routine were hazardous for his mood.

Needing something to keep him occupied and calm, I turned on the television, praying I might happen across one of the two or three programs he was willing to watch. Fortunately, that short list included Bluey, which the Disney Channel was running on a loop. So, I sat with him on the uncomfortable couch to watch the hijinks of a family of inexplicably anthropomorphic canines given over to such literalism that Blue Heelers are actually bright blue.

I had no idea what was about to hit me.

The episode begins with Bluey, her sister Bingo, and their mom Chilli at a playground. As Bluey happily skips across the monkey bars, she demands to know, “Am I better at the monkey bars than Bingo?” She follows this up with further efforts to assess her merit in comparison to others, leading Chilli to advise her, “Just run your own race.” When Bluey demands to know what she means, Chilli gives her a playful boop on the nose and asks, “Have I ever told you the story of when you took your first steps?”

At this point, you might be thinking, “This sounds like a perfectly normal episode of children’s television. Why is she making a big deal out of this?” Oh, wait for it, friend. Just wait. This story isn’t about Bluey. It’s about her mom.

Chilli recalls when Bluey was a baby (not a puppy, confusingly) and rolled over ahead of schedule. Not only did this make Chilli proud but also “I think I may have turned into a bit of a show off.” Every first-time parent can sympathize with this desire to proclaim each developmental milestone from the rooftops as a feat of superhuman ability. But then Chilli took Bluey to a mothers group where baby Judo began sitting up ahead of schedule.

“It’s not a race!” Judo’s mum insisted.

“But it was a race!” Bluey concludes in the present. “A baby race!” sister Bingo exclaims.

Chilli then relates further tales of Bluey’s development. Not only was Bluey not the first to sit up: she also got beat to crawling. In fact, regardless of which methods Chilli used to instruct her, Bluey never mastered crawling. The best she could manage was rolling or bum shuffling. Chilli tells of multiple visits to the pediatrician in which she anxiously inquired why Bluey was falling behind, only to be assured each time that things were proceeding normally by a doctor with the tired expression of one who has heard it all before.

Having made it to this point in the episode, I felt a knot forming in my stomach. I knew all too well the concern filling this cartoon mother’s heart.

Whoever created the Centers for Disease Control’s Developmental Milestones checklist did so with the best of intentions. Parents are asked to consult it before each appointment with the pediatrician. I even installed a helpful app on my phone that I could reference constantly — or even obsessively. This seemingly benign list became for me a thing of terror. Each time our son reached a new checkpoint and I filled out the appropriate bubbles, he was completing fewer of the expected skills for his age. He was simply not measuring up, and should he continue that trajectory, he would be sorted out of the “normally developing” category into a place no parent wants their child to go.

The CDC checklist began to feel like my son’s first standardized test: one of many sorting efforts that would continue into young adulthood, classifying him by degrees of merit. At his three-year appointment, my son had been officially sorted into the “developmentally delayed” category, beginning a medical odyssey that continues to the present day.

While this was the culmination of my fears, I felt an odd sense of relief echoed by many parents who reach this point: it was not my fault, and there was nothing I could have done to change things. For, like Chilli, I had tried every strategy in vain and watched mothers achieve things with their children that I could not match. My husband and I were not stupid people, but our knowledge seemed utterly worthless when it came to helping our son. Now, perhaps, I understood why.

While I had only been half attending to the first part of Bluey’s baby race, my attention was now rapt. I was emotionally invested in what would happen to this fictional family of bipedal dogs.

The episode continues. “I just felt like I was doing everything wrong,” Chilli laments after numerous medical appointments. Utterly discouraged, she stops attending the mothers group. She can no longer stand the comparisons, the pretending as if everything is alright. Her efforts to prove her worth have failed.

Then one of the other moms in the group — a pink (!?) poodle named Bella — comes to check on Chilli, where she finds her too deflated to play with little Bluey. Bella pulls out a photo of her family and reveals that she has nine children. Chilli begins to experience relief when she realizes that the reason this other mom seems so at ease is that she has been there, done that, and bought the diapers many times over.

Then comes the key part of the episode: the one that struck me square in the heart as I watched it.

“There’s something you need to know,” Bella says, putting a hand on Chilli’s knee.

Chilli looks at her with anxious eyes, no doubt expecting another piece of advice that is doomed to fail. “What?” she asks quietly.

Then comes the reply that changes everything. Bella looks Chilli firmly in the eyes and says, “You’re doing great.”

Watching this point in the episode, my own eyes became suspiciously moist. Here was the thing every parent longs to hear! While it is true that some parents disregard their offspring, most of us genuinely want to see our children flourish and to do everything in our power to make that happen. Only, we do not have the power to make it happen. We are fallible, limited, and overwhelmed. When having to endure the third respiratory virus in three weeks, every parent will end up screaming at their dearest loved ones. It is practically a law of nature, and it applies not only to the first eighteen years of a child’s life, but also as long as they and their parents live.

Every parent screws up royally. That is a sad fact of life. Try as we might, every one of us will fail in ways both great and small to ensure the best outcomes for our children. We will spill the breastmilk, drop the baby, forget the backpack at home, feed them too much sugar. Not only that, but we will scar them emotionally in ways we cannot anticipate. Half of them will end up in therapy as adults complaining about how we messed them up, and they will be right.

Parents don’t just need advice. They need absolution. And when Chilli hears the words, “You’re doing great,” that is what she receives: a super-sized helping of grace. With three little words, the stranglehold of meritocracy is broken.

Absolution was what I desperately needed that morning at the Embassy Suites. Our vacation had already contained moments of high stress and frayed emotions. Hanging over everything was the question of what would happen to our son. I never expected to receive grace from the lips of an animated poodle, but boy, did I need it! Boy, was I grateful for it!

The episode ends with Bluey taking her first steps while her mom is working in the kitchen. She moves unsteadily, hands extended. Chilli’s face breaks into a look of pure joy.

“Why’d I decide to walk in the kitchen?” Bluey asks in the present.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” Chilli responds.

Then, Bingo delivers a line that dooms every mother to tears: “Maybe you just saw something you wanted.”