Parents, do you limit what your kids can read/watch?

Cafe Society
1

Spinoff, of course, of this thread.

I follow basically the same premise my mother did. I softly control access to books I like and simply don’t buy or borrow books for my kids I don’t think they’re ready for or, more commonly, books that I think are of poor quality.

But that’s not even an absolute. My son hated reading for years and years, because his ability didn’t measure up to his interest level. My rule of thumb with him was that anything he’d read voluntarily was just fine. Anything to get him reading more! While he wasn’t interested in much of what I liked, he enjoyed the Redwall series, which I think are crap. Well, that’s not fair. One of them is good. Any one. The rest are rehashes of the first one you read. But given his limited literacy skills at the time, I think that’s *why *he liked them, so it was a good thing. As he got into his tweens, he became a more avid reader, choosing things I probably wouldn’t have picked out, but nothing I found objectionable or inappropriate. I wish his tastes matched mine better, because I love sharing books, but I’m learning what he likes and able to suggest books that I may not love, but he does. (A few weeks ago, he was given a used copy of The Illuminatus Trilogy, which he’s eagerly devouring! He says it’s “a cross between Hitchhiker’s Guide and Illusions.”) Basically, I’ve never had to censor his choices because I think they’ve been good ones.

My daughter is now 5 and I exercise more control over her choices simply by dint of purchasing power. If she’s given something as a gift that I don’t like, it slips into the donation bag when she’s not looking, and I’ve not been busted yet. The last one was a horrible treacly thing full of strict traditional gender roles (“Mary only says things that are nice and sweet.”) and Christian pablum.

Movies and TV are limited, not so much by topic as by “disturbingness”. I’m personally okay with positive depictions of loving sex, but I’m more concerned with violence, and especially sex combined with violence. But again, I think it’s more important to watch my kids and their reactions than to make determinations based on ratings or even my personal feelings. My daughter loves nonfiction medical shows, even graphic ones that many parents would consider too scary, but she freaks out at even a description of animal abuse without a picture. My son gets queasy looking at a real blister, but loves fictional gore and is focused on the special effects, not the story. He loved *Blade *at 7 years old, she won’t be allowed to read or watch Black Beauty until she’s 30!

So, parents, do you limit what your kids can read or watch? If you do and your parents didn’t, why is that? Do you think there’s more “inappropriate” stuff out there these days, or do you wish your parents had sheltered you more?

2

I limit what they can watch. My parents didn’t, but in my day:

  1. There weren’t 500 channels of tv available OR the internet.
  2. If you showed a woman’s breasts in the movies , that got you an M or R rating, not PG-13. Showing the Full Monty got you an X rating, not an R like it would today.
  3. The use of profanity was a rare exception, and not the norm.
  4. TV and movies reflected the positive aspects of culture and society. It was up to the parents to discuss the negative aspects.
  5. We played outside. and when we came inside we watched TV as a family.

Our children will grow up and be exposed to the world. I prefer to ease them into it, rather than plunge them headfirst into it.

Just my two cents…

3

Of course!

My 17 and 19 year-old sons are not monitored as far as what they read and watch anymore, but my 11 year old certainly is. Unfortunately, he doesn’t read that much at home, but I sure do censor what he watches. Shows like Family Guy, Southpark, Drawn Together, and most R rated movies… those are clearly not appropriate for him.

4

WhyNot: With your censorship tailored to your children’s personalities, have you considered how reading or watching things they would find scary, if they want to, might help them overcome those fears?

5

I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t let my kids read (although “Christian pablum” did give me pause).

I have held them back a bit from certain movies and TV shows.

My reason for the double standard is that when you read, you see what your imagination can show you and no more. If you don’t understand what you’re reading, it’ll probably just flow right past you, or you’ll get bored and quit reading, or you’ll talk to someone about it (like your mom)!

Movies/TV just smack you upside the head.

I’m trying hard to define this better, but all I can say is: With reading, you go to it. With movies, it comes to you.

6

I let my kids watch anything they want short of hardcore porn or extemely graphic violence. I watch South Park and Family Guy with them a lot. A great deal of the really blue humor goes over their heads, but if they ask, I explain it to them. I don’t think any kid was ever harmed by having too much information about the world, or helped by having that info kept away from them.

Only one of my kids is old enough to read, and she reads way over her head, but I don’t limit that either. Just recently, she read Jack Ketchum’s Off Season (a cannibal hillbilly novel, ala The Hills have eyes).

I pretty much don’t care. I’ve never really believed in trying “protect” kids in that way.

7

As I said in the other thread:

By emotional development, I mean that between the ages of 8-12 she was a voracious consumer of everything written but emotionally, she still was comparing herself to her infant/toddler sister.

Now, I’m pretty much letting her have free reign over her reading materials. I still keep an eye in general on what she’s reading, but now she’s matured significantly, I know she has a better frame of reference for understanding things and if she has a question she will come ask. We still share books and if I come across something I think needs to expounded upon, I’ll ask her what she thought about it and then tell her what I think.

8

Absolutely. My son cannot watch any television during the week - only weekends. Since my husband and I work full-time, he doesn’t get as much time at home with us as we’d like, and allowing him television during the week not only further limits time he spends with us, it also causes some discipline problems (usually related to not having enough of our attention and time) and I’d rather not set him up for that. On weekends, we do allow about an hour a day, thought the television he does watch is somewhat limited to stuff like PBS kids, Spongebob, etc. For what it’s worth, he’s four.

The baby gets as little TV as we can manage. Our family room is configured in such a way that if you set her in certain spots, she can play on the floor and not see the TV. She’s not mobile yet (though she’s trying, so it could change as early as tomorrow), but when she becomes mobile, we’ll just have to keep an eye on her when the TV’s on to keep her out of line of sight of it. My husband and I are both pretty strict about the TV. Our children are both so rapturously hypnotized by it that it’s kind of unsettling, so we prefer to have it on as little as possible.

As for reading, my son’s book collection includes pretty much whatever interests him. There are certain things I try to keep put up (he once saw a copy of a breast health issue of Women’s Health depicting a nude photo of a woman with a mastectomy), but most things as long as they don’t show gratuitous violence, lots of gore or graphic nudity are fair game. The baby obviously has a limited attention span and really enjoys her cloth books and Baby Colors book.

9

Books - no. It hasn’t become an issue and, now that she’s 11, I doubt she will.

TV/movies - yes, of course. Family Guy is one of the shows that I wouldn’t let her watch because, while some episodes are OK, some really really are not, and it’s not subtle stuff that would go over her head - it’s right there on screen.

She told me recently that she accidentally watched a film at her nan’s which really disturbed her - one of the scenes was of a nun being gang-raped. I don’t think it was a Nightmare on Elm St, though; I watched that at her age, but I was a much tougher kid than she is, in ways bad as well as good.

Now that she’s playing Lego Star Wars, she wants to watch all the prequels. I never let her watch the last one because of one particular scene, but I think she’d old enough now. I’m loathe to let her watch the second one because it’s dreadful.

10

“Let me show you the mercy of the Jedi by dismembering you and leaving you to die slowly in agony!” That one?

And yeah, they really were terrible. Absolutely terrible.

11

No - the one at the school, with the kids. I think that would have upset her (in a bad way) when it first came out and she was about 6 or 7. Now it might upset her but she’d understand it.

12

You can defuse the situation (and demonstrate the terrible writing) by giving her a stopwatch and letting her literally time how long it takes Anakin to go from, “Gee, I don’t know if I should let Mace Windu kill Palpatine” to “Whee, I’m killin’ babies!”