Baby Reindeer Reviews: The Netflix Show That Shocked My House

I was knee-deep in a laundry basket full of tiny socks that somehow all turn into singles in the dryer, when my oldest—the one who tests every single gray hair on my head daily—yelled from the living room that he found a fun new animal show on the television. "It's about a baby reindeer, Mama!" he hollered over the sound of the washing machine. I didn't even think twice about it, y'all. I was just so profoundly grateful for the prospect of four consecutive minutes of silence that I kept matching socks. Then I heard the dialogue coming from the speakers, dropped my entire laundry basket on the dog, practically dove over the coffee table, and snatched the remote control so fast I'm pretty sure I pulled a muscle in my shoulder.

I don't know who's in charge of naming things over at Netflix, but I'd like to have a few words with them out behind the barn. You don't take a dark, deeply traumatizing psychological thriller about stalking and severe abuse and slap a title on it that sounds like a Disney holiday special. I'm just gonna be real with you, when I finally sat down later that night with a glass of cheap wine and looked up actual baby reindeer reviews on my phone to figure out what almost just played in my living room, my jaw hit the floor.

This show is based on some Scottish comedian's real-life nightmare, and apparently the title comes from a stuffed animal his stalker used to have, which is just tragic on about fifty different levels. But as a tired mother who relies on the streaming menu screen not being a minefield of adult content, I felt completely betrayed. The lady in the show sends the guy something like forty thousand emails and hundreds of hours of voicemails, and that's not even the worst of it. The deeper you get into the episodes, the more horrifying it becomes, with heavy drug use and scenes of assault that I honestly couldn't even stomach watching myself, let alone risk my five-year-old seeing.

Meanwhile, the actual shows made for my kids are named things like Blippi, which sounds like a digestive issue you'd bring up at your annual physical.

My grandma was right about the television

My grandmother used to tell me that the television was an open window to the outside world, and if you didn't keep a tight screen on it, all the neighborhood bugs would fly right into your house and bite you. Bless her heart, she was talking about MTV back in the 90s, but the logic holds up even better today. We're so busy trying to keep these tiny humans alive, fed, and mostly clean that we just blindly trust the algorithm to put the right things in the "Trending Now" row.

Our doctor, Dr. Evans, was just telling me at the baby's last checkup how much crippling anxiety he's seeing in young kids who accidentally stumble across mature content on tablets and smart TVs. He was saying that their little brains just kind of short-circuit when they see graphic violence or psychological terror because they don't have the emotional framework to process it as fiction, though honestly I think half the problem is just us parents being too chronically exhausted to figure out how to set up the PIN codes correctly. I read somewhere—maybe it was an article from the AAP or maybe it was a TikTok from a tired pediatric nurse, who even knows anymore—that early exposure to this stuff can cause major sleep regressions and behavioral issues, which makes sense because my oldest acted like a feral raccoon for a week after he accidentally saw thirty seconds of a horror movie commercial last year.

You can't just hand them the remote while you go switch the laundry and blindly assume a cute name means a cute show because the internet is a wild, lawless place.

Let's talk about actual things for your infant

If you stumbled onto this page frantically searching for a woodland creature toy or a sweet gift for your little one and instead found my rant about a terrifying television show, I apologize. Let's pivot to things that actually belong in a nursery and won't require years of therapy.

If you want a look at our gentler, non-traumatizing aesthetic, you can always browse through our organic baby clothing collections when you've a minute.

I know a lot of moms are looking for cute animal-themed things to distract a fussy baby, and since we're on the topic, I've to talk about my absolute favorite lifesaver. When my oldest was a baby, he chewed on everything in sight—my car keys, the coffee table leg, the dog's tail, you name it. By the time my youngest started teething, I was smarter and bought the Panda Teether. I'm not exaggerating when I say this little piece of food-grade silicone saved my sanity. It's shaped like a little panda with bamboo, and the texture is perfect for those back gums that always seem to cause the most screaming. It's budget-friendly enough that I bought three of them to keep in rotation, and you can just toss it right in the dishwasher when it gets covered in that gross, sticky baby drool. It's my holy grail product.

Now, on the flip side, I'll give you my honest thoughts on the Gentle Baby Building Block Set. Look, they're perfectly fine for what they're. They're made of soft rubber, which is a massive win because when my middle child inevitably throws one at my head from across the room, it doesn't send me to the emergency room. But if I'm being completely truthful, my kids don't really build with them at all. They mostly just squeeze them or try to bite the little animal symbols off the sides. They're great if you just need something squishy and non-toxic for the bath, but don't expect your ten-month-old to suddenly become an architect.

If you've a really tiny baby and you want to encourage that independent play without resorting to screens or obnoxious plastic toys that sing the same off-key song until you want to rip your own hair out, the Wooden Baby Gym is the way to go. We set ours up in the corner of the living room, and it actually looks nice with my furniture instead of looking like a plastic rainbow exploded in my house. It has these sweet little animal hanging toys, including an elephant, that the baby can bat at, and it really helped my youngest develop his hand-eye coordination while I finally drank a cup of coffee while it was still hot.

The reality of modern mothering

We're all just doing the best we can with the tools we've, y'all. The fact that we've to be on high alert every time the TV turns on is just another layer of mental load added to the mountain of things we already carry. I used to judge those moms who wouldn't let their kids watch anything but PBS Kids, and now I'm entirely that mom.

It's exhausting constantly policing the digital boundaries of our homes. But after the near-miss with that absolute disaster of a show, I sat down and spent forty-five minutes fighting with the settings menu on my smart TV until every single profile except mine and my husband's required a four-digit PIN to watch anything rated above PG. Is it annoying when I just want to put on a baking show while I fold towels? Yes. Is it better than having to explain to a kindergartener what a stalker is? Absolutely.

Ready to skip the digital drama and outfit your nursery with sustainable, beautiful things that will actually give you peace of mind? Check out our full collection of baby essentials before you go.

The questions y'all keep sending me about this mess

Should I let my teenager watch it if everyone at school is talking about it?

I'm just gonna be real with you, I'd fight tooth and nail to keep my teenager away from this show if I had one. The themes of sexual assault, intense drug use, and psychological manipulation are incredibly heavy and graphic. If they're dead set on it because of peer pressure, you better sit your butt on that couch and watch it with them so you can pause it and talk about boundaries, digital grooming, and what toxic behavior genuinely looks like, because it's not romantic or funny.

How do I make sure my kids don't accidentally click on mature shows with cute names?

You have to go into the account settings on your phone or computer—doing it on the actual TV is usually a nightmare—and lock down the maturity ratings for every single kids' profile. I also highly suggest putting a PIN requirement on your own adult profile, because my kids figured out how to click on my face icon to bypass their restricted profiles by the time they were four.

What if my kid already saw a scary clip of a mature show?

Don't panic and make it a huge deal, because kids feed off our anxiety. Dr. Evans told me once that the best thing to do is just calmly ask them what they saw and how it made them feel, and remind them that what happens on the television is just adults playing dress-up and pretend. Then maybe distract them with a walk outside or a physical activity to get them out of their own head before bedtime.

Is there a safe animal show you really suggest?

If your kid really just wants to watch baby animals, stick to the classic nature documentaries narrated by the guy with the soothing British voice. Those are usually totally safe, beautifully filmed, and honestly, they usually put my toddlers right to sleep, which is the ultimate win in my book.

Are the Kianao toys painted with safe colors?

Yeah, blessedly so. Whether you're looking at the wooden gym or the silicone teethers I mentioned earlier, everything is strictly non-toxic and free from all those scary chemicals like BPA and phthalates. I wouldn't let my own feral children chew on them if they weren't completely safe.