Life Lessons from the childhood cartoon “Madeline”

Why every child needs to watch it

Yasasi Rajapakse
3 min readApr 8, 2015

To begin with I must say how much I loved this cartoon as a child, but back then it was for fun and that’s all there was, there wasn't anymore. When I re-watch it as an adult now,I couldn't help but wonder how much life lessons it has in every single story.

We love our bread, we love our butter but most of all we love each other.

This phrase is recited by girls before they break their bread, it shows how much they value relationships over physical things. Even though bread and butter symbolizes the basic needs for a normal human being, they valued their loved ones even before that.

“Madeline” Learns from every mistake

There isn't a better way to learn than learning from mistakes. Madeline is a joyful character who loves experiments, who loves to try things, and she does lots of mistakes too. But none of those mistakes can discourage her, she stay joyful, and even more importantly she learns from them.

Don’t be afraid: say ‘Phoo Phoo’ instead

Whenever Madeline sees something frighting, she just say phoo-phoo and continues to face it. What a girl. Everybody should have their own way of facing their fears otherwise life would be very difficult. It is not essential to say phoo-phoo just find some way to make your self stronger when you feel that you are loosing it. You will be successful.

Every story has unique life lesson and surprising enough they are so practical to use in everyday life.

If you watch the series again you will understand what I am telling here. Watch this episode to understand how deep the message is.

It teaches us that we all have unique skills and we need not to worry that we don’t have every skill in the world. Needless to say song is my favorite.

Discipline matters.

Having and maintaining disciplines every time, makes life easy. The beauty of disciplines are that you can be as adventurous and curious as you need to be and look like an angel to the outside world. Madeline is adventurous but not stubborn or rude, I believe it is the best quality in her.

Have a pet

Sometimes they will help you to find solutions to your matters. Genevieve is a great dog that helps Madeline a lot. Pets are awesome. So have a pet. Even though you will have to feed them, walk them and do some extra work for them, they will not let you down when you need them.

Songs are amazing

Children learns songs very fast. Songs in this series are very catchy, beautiful and most of all very meaningful. So I think this cartoon is a must see for any child in the world.

Not only for children this cartoon contains many life lessons for adults as well, Specially many parental inspiration from Miss. Clavel.

Best Parental guides given by Miss. Clavel

She let them run, she let them to whatever they want. But she knows when ‘Something is not right’ using her 6th sense. She has amazing ways of keeping things tidy, two straight lines is the best way to count 12 girls. She would know if someone is missing in a jiffy. She sing to the children, she teach them all the subjects. She act as a guide and let all the girls shine.

Oh well I think I have caught the rhyme from the narrator.

I can go on days and night, talking about little Madeline. But today I will end here, Thanks for reading and a very big cheer!

haa haa.. no seriously please watch the series again and comment if you think just like I do.

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Yasasi Rajapakse

I write about how User experience designing can tranform the human experience in the world.