On a TV show, from a magazine, or a movie? [Games are on-topic too despite the existence of the 'Room] Can range from obvious trauma at seeing full-blown hardcore sex or graphic violence to more-subtle effects like “acting out” things they saw.
I was reading an article today in the Wall Street Journal (which now has a quasi-half decent entertainment section) which had this as a side issue. Of course the moral guardians are constantly hang-wringing themselves over things like this (tho this isn’t GD mind), that our wee ones constantly need protection from, so I was wondering if anyone had actual examples of such things.
Well, my two oldest were a little freaked out by the library ghost in Ghostbusters for a few days after seeing it. We had a couple of bad dreams and a lot of pretend play involving ghosts for a while. They seem to have got over it with no major issues, though. (Of course I expect that this, as so many other things, will be a topic in their future therapy sessions.)
I don’t remember how old I was–I had to be older than 4, because the movie came out when I was 4, but one of my earlier childhood memories was getting nauseated over seeing something at what I assume was the end of the movie Gandhi. I remember him being shot, and then maybe a funeral pyre? It made me nauseated, although I don’t think I actually threw up.
I’ve always been like that. I’m fine with cartoon violence (I saw Jaws 3D in the theaters and LOVED it!) and I tolerate distantly historical violence like Rome but if the violence is realistic I can’t stand it.
I don’t know if horror movies really count, but here’s mine anyway.
When I was young (like elementary school age) I was at a slumber party with some older kids. We were watching a bunch of horror movies and I remember one that freaked me out. Actually, that isn’t true. I remember only a particular scene from that movie. It was a giant tree that was all made up of people it had killed (ate?). The tree was all writhing with its human faces and stuff. I left the room like a big baby and went to bed early.
I have no idea what movie that was, but I still remember that tree.
If it’s done realistically (in the kids’ eyes) I don’t see why it wouldn’t have a similar effect to them experiencing it in person, but maybe to a somewhat lesser extent since they’re removed from the action. My kid has been traumatized by seeing a couple of extremely scary/gory movies when she was way too young for it (accidental, believe me). I saw a movie that was too frightening for me when I was 7 that gave me nightmares for many years (The Haunting) but I wouldn’t say it traumatized me. But it was pretty tame compared to adult content nowadays. I don’t know why kids would not have effects from powerful movies since their minds are so impressionable.
Unless you’re worried that this event is going to lead her to be suicidal, an axe murderer, or an alcoholic, calling it “traumatic” is rather a sensational term.
My parents kept us pretty sheltered from movies when we were little. We only ever saw what would be considered “age-appropriate” stuff. But I remember seeing Rocky IV in the theater when I was 6, which was rated PG, and Ivan Drago scared the crap out of me. I very much remember hiding under my dad’s coat for most of the movie. I don’t think it was the blood of the fights that scared me, just this nice man getting beaten up by this very big scary man.
My parents took me to see The Mission when I was 8, and I burst into loud sobs when a dying Robert DeNiro looks up through the flames to see Jeremy Irons carrying the cross. I don’t remember anything else about that film, except that one scene. I also remember my mom ineffectually trying to shush me and muffling my mouth with tissues.
They also bought the soundtrack to the movie on vinyl, and I would cry whenever they played it. That movie scarred me, I tell you.
Not all things describable as “traumatic” have permanent or life-overwhelming effects. My husband had terrifying nightmares after watching the original Alien film in the theater at age 7ish, and they recurred frequently, and lasted into his teenage years. I’d say that was a fairly traumatic experience.
One of the things that freaked me out when I was young was the Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days sketch on Monty Python, which I had snuck out of bed to see at age 4. And that’s probably why to this day I don’t like excess gratuitous gore.
When I was 14, my sister (12 years old) and I were at a neighbor’s house, and Poltergeist was on TV. Our baby sister, then 3 years old, wandered into the house right at the scene where this guy is looking in the mirror and starts ripping his own face off.
She turned pale, her eyes got big as saucers, and she yelled, “I’m getting out of here!” before hauling ass out the door and back home.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get totally freaked out from adult content. I’ve known some young to teen girls who got wigged out by scary movies, or grossed out by sexually related content.
I think it has less to do with content and more to do with personality. Some kids and adults are completely unphased by fictional content because… it’s fictional, and in the case of kids, often whatever they aren’t mature enough to understand will just pass over their heads.
And then some kids/adults are either more sensitive and react easily to things, or are more likely to act out or be impressionable.
It took ME over 5 years to get over it! Then again I saw it in the theater when I was 8. It’s still one of my favorite movies, I just couldn’t watch that part for YEARS. And yes, I did the whole bit, screaming, crying, just horrified.
Kids can get freaked out by the dumbest things. I remember when I was about twelve or so, my best friend got this fascination with things paranormal. She had a book about haunted houses, and some page in it claimed that in some house, somewhere, the television would get a picture of a hand on the screen when it was turned off. It had a photo of it showing this TV with a man’s hand on the screen. It was just an ordinary hand, nothing scary.
But for weeks after that, I would just stare at the screen of my darkened TV set and get chills.
I can still remember the picture.
So yeah, kids can get freaked out by stuff, but you can’t protect them all the time. It’s part of life.
Fairly recently (she just turned 12) my daughter saw something at her Grandmother’s house that is, from her description, the rape scene from one of the Freddy Kruger films; she was really disturbed by it and had nightmares for days.
The book that disturbed her most was a kids’ book, but that’s partly because she hasn’t really had much access to anything not aimed at kids, partly due to us stopping her and partly due to her own lack of interest.
Ain’t it the truth. I was severely freaked out by Close Encounters of the Third Kind when it came out. I was seven at the time. Last summer I finally watched it again, at the ripe old age of nearly 40, and I couldn’t figure out what I had been so scared about.
One of our sons, at the age of 5 or so, happened to walk into the living room while we were watching The Third Man - the bit where it’s revealed that Harry Lime was selling watered-down black market penicillin that was given to children with meningitis, and “the lucky ones died”, the others lived but went insane. A little while later we found him sobbing in his room for the little kids who were given the bad medicine. Hoo boy. I think we finally managed to convince him that the whole thing was made up for the movie, and in any case we did a rethink of what we could get away with watching while the kids were still awake; “no violence” was clearly not enough…
I also was severely freaked out by CE3K, and still am to this day. I was never super traumatized by sex, or violence or anything like that–what always got me was weirdness. I got seriously freaked out by an episode of Monty Python once too, and the strange cartoon Wizards.
I don’t swim, and never learned, to this day because I got taken to see ‘Jaws’ when I was about 7. For years afterward I wouldn’t even go in swimming pools that were clear as bells.
My ten year old wanted a ‘real’ SF book last winter and I gave her Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. She didn’t make it past the opener. She came to me crying about the baby eaten by the compsagnathus.
I begged my parents for weeks to see the movie Poltergeist when I was about eight or so. They, exhausted and worn down from my pleading. relented.
Scared the s*** out of me. I could not sleep the whole night in my own bed for weeks. I can watch it now, but I still generally skip the clown doll scene.