{"id":626594,"date":"2026-08-08T06:08:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T06:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/626594\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T06:08:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T06:08:38","slug":"what-megan-hilty-watches-and-listens-to-with-her-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/626594\/","title":{"rendered":"What Megan Hilty Watches (and Listens to) With Her Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Everett Collection, Getty Images, Duolingo\n <\/p>\n

It should come as no surprise that Megan Hilty\u2019s 11-year-old daughter, Viola, takes musical theater pretty darn seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe got really upset yesterday because she was on the bus home from day camp and her Discman ran out of batteries as she was in the middle of listening to West Side Story,\u201d says Hilty, a Broadway veteran who has starred in shows like Wicked, 9 to 5, and the recent adaptation of Death Becomes Her.<\/p>\n

Hilty began to map her way to the theater when she started voice lessons at age 12 after expressing an interest in performing opera, so Viola\u2019s current path \u2014 enrolled in a performing arts school, with a focus on singing \u2014 seems genetically predestined.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean both of the Smash star\u2019s kids are bound for the stage. Hilty says her 9-year-old son, Ronan, has shown almost no interest in following her into the theater. Instead, he\u2019s more interested in Hilty\u2019s voice-over work for animation, where she\u2019s been working pretty steadily since first popping up on Phineas & Ferb in 2010. (Her most recent gig is doing the voice of Lasso Lucy on the new Mickey Mouse Clubhouse+ special, \u201cMickey\u2019s Country Farm.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth of my kids have been asking me and my husband if they can start auditioning for voice-over gigs because they\u2019re really interested in how cartoons are made, so that\u2019s been a big conversation lately,\u201d Hilty says. \u201cWhen I was a kid, I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to actually be a Disney princess. I just want to sing those songs and say those words,\u2019 because it felt so far away. But with our kids, they can say, \u2018If Mom can do it, I can do it,\u2019 so they know it\u2019s actually within reach.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Disney+\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

I wish my kids got along better sometimes, but one thing they can agree on is watching Bluey<\/a>. We started watching it back when it first came on, and I think what struck me and my husband was how heartwarming it was and how it was really written for whole families to enjoy together instead of geared toward one specific part of the family. Maybe that\u2019s why it\u2019s so successful.<\/p>\n

In terms of favorite episodes, anything with the grannies is really great. There\u2019s an episode called \u201cTakeaway,\u201d and when we watch that, my husband is always like, \u201cI feel so seen right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anything on Disney Junior. I\u2019m not gonna call it my babysitter, because that makes it feel weird, but I do feel like if I walk out of the room, they\u2019re in great hands with that programming. They\u2019re not only going to enjoy it, but they\u2019re going to learn something too.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s why my husband and I are so averse to all things YouTube for the kids, because there are some shows on there that actually have a beginning, middle, and end plus a vetted story line, but those are few and far between. So we kind of have a \u201cno YouTube, thank you very much\u201d rule, but if you\u2019re on Disney Junior, then you\u2019re going to have an easier time with us being okay with you sitting and watching for a while.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Fox\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

We also watch Bob\u2019s Burgers together as a family, which is questionable at times. It\u2019s more adult, but the kids love it and so do we. It leads to a lot of discussions but, also,\u00a0my husband has this encyclopedic knowledge of all things pop culture, so he has a knack for being \u201cNo, not this episode.\u201d I don\u2019t remember things like that, so luckily he\u2019s here to guide us in the right direction.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how we got into watching it together. It\u2019s one of my favorite shows, though, so when the kids were scrolling through and asked, \u201cIs this something we can watch?\u201d we said, \u201cI think so,\u201d and they were really tickled by that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

My daughter does this thing where she puts together PowerPoint presentations if she really wants something. That\u2019s how we got our family cat, so you know she\u2019s very persuasive.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, she came up with another presentation in which she was asking for a Discman, the portable CD player from my youth, and I was like, \u201cWhat? What are you talking about? How do you know about this? Why do you need one?\u201d But I started doing some research and it seems like that\u2019s what the kids are doing now. They\u2019re all listening to their music on CDs and cassette tapes as kind of a \u201ctake your power back\u201d thing. Like \u201cI\u2019m owning my music again. I want something tangible and I\u2019m gonna listen to it from beginning to end.\u201d That kind of thing, like very old school. Everything \u201990s is new again.<\/p>\n

So we got her these CD and cassette players, and then my son wanted one, too, so that\u2019s what they\u2019ve been listening to things on. It\u2019s been wild to see my daughter walk around the apartment with this Discman and plugged-in earphones like I did when I was her age.<\/p>\n

A lot of the young performers are starting to cater to the interest in physical media, too, because artists make more money selling tangible things. We\u2019ve gone to all of the artists\u2019 websites, like Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande \u2026 they all have CDs and cassettes for sale, and we\u2019ve been trying to support the artists by ordering from them directly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s become fun hunting for CDs and tapes, too. We go to used bookshops in New York, and that\u2019s where she found an old Barbra Streisand album and an Annie Lennox album. Then Ronan was like, \u201cI want DVDs,\u201d and so we said okay and bought The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.<\/p>\n

The first time my kids were old enough to be aware of live television was in a hotel room \u2014 forced to watch live television, they were like, Wait, what\u2019s happening? Why can\u2019t we be in control of this? But they also kind of loved it, and then they fell in love with sitcoms. It was kind of wild to watch. They were forced to deal with what I dealt with when I was a kid, which is that you get what you get. You sit down and watch it or you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We play a lot of board games. We\u2019re big into Clue. We have a couple different versions of it. We have Bob\u2019s Burgers Trivial Pursuit, too.<\/p>\n

The kids love to play chess, which is wild to me. My son loves Dungeons and Dragons.<\/p>\n

Have you played What Do You Meme? It\u2019s hilarious, and the things that the kids come up with are so funny. They give you pictures of famous memes, which you display, and then everybody picks what the caption would be for it, so it\u2019s like \u201cWho can caption this meme the best?\u201d It\u2019s really fun.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re big Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza people, too, but I think my kids like it more than I do. There\u2019s a lot of slapping on the table involved, and I have very long, very fake nails and always feel like I\u2019m going to hurt somebody. I\u2019m very tentative in that game, so I lose a lot, but the kids have so much fun. They\u2019re just thrilled by making the different movements for the different animals and trying to slap the table the quickest.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We read a lot during the pandemic. We read a lot of the Harry Potter books. We did all of The Magic Treehouse together, which Ronan probably doesn\u2019t remember but Viola does.<\/p>\n

Right now, my daughter and I are reading the newest Hunger Games book together, which has been really fun. It\u2019s also adult, but they\u2019re reading it in school, so it leads to interesting conversations.<\/p>\n

My son loves all things Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He just thinks it\u2019s hilarious, and that\u2019s how he goes to sleep. He listens to those books on tape. My husband leaves his phone playing those at a distance in Ronan\u2019s room as he\u2019s falling asleep, and then later he\u2019ll go and collect it back.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo: Duolingo\n <\/p>\n

My daughter has a phone, but it\u2019s one that has enough major training wheels that it\u2019s become boring enough that she never wants to use it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s through a program called Pinwheel. There\u2019s a dashboard that I can use to control everything on it, and it\u2019s really great. All of the apps that you put on it have ratings; for example, red doesn\u2019t follow their guidelines so they don\u2019t recommend it for kids. That\u2019s usually for reasons like you can use it to contact other people or your kids can be contacted by strangers through the app. Yellow is moderately okay, and then green is totally vetted and approved.<\/p>\n

She does things like Duolingo on it, so she can actually learn stuff, but there\u2019s no social media on the phone and there\u2019s no internet. She can get on the internet on the laptop that she uses for homework and stuff, but she\u2019s not on it all that much either.<\/p>\n

Duolingo is great because you can pair it up with your friends. It\u2019s not that you\u2019re competing with them or anything, but you\u2019re encouraging each other to keep going because it\u2019s \u201cyour friend went to this level; maybe you should meet them at that level and then you can talk to each other in French.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other thing about Pinwheel is that she can\u2019t call anybody who I don\u2019t program into her phone, and nobody can call her if I haven\u2019t programmed them in, either. So it\u2019s a very curated group of people that she\u2019s able to call and text, and she knows that I can see everything. So there\u2019s lots of training wheels on this phone.<\/p>\n

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