While reading this thread, I was thinking about the whole matter of scary stuff, children, and exposing the latter to the former. So I ask the Dopers out there – should parents deliberately expose their kids to “scary” stuff? A related anecdote: a few weeks ago, my family was in Las Vegas for a weekend getaway. We ended up in front of the Treasure Island casino on Sunday afternoon, and decided to wait for the “free pirate show” that was starting in twenty minutes.
For some reason – maybe it was the crowds, or the spooky black pirate flag – my son, who’s normally as fearless and oblivious as three-year-olds are wont, is getting nervous about the whole thing. He doesn’t want to see the show, even though it’s got pirates and fireworks and is a spectacle, three things which he normally adores. I try to tell him not to worry and that it’s pretend and Daddy’s right here and all that stuff, but he’s still nervous and apprehensive. My wife takes the opposite tack and cuts to the chase: “We’re here, we’re going to see it, so don’t be a scardy-cat and watch already.”
The show eventually starts, and my son watches it with no apparent reaction – he didn’t cry or fuss or get scared, but he didn’t cheer or laugh, either. But then, that’s a common reaction for him whenever he sees something new that he’s undecided about, so I’m not concerned.
Anyway, getting back to the OP… what’s the parental consensus (if there is one) on exposing your kids to “scary” stuff? My feeling is that if the child doesn’t want to see it, then forcing him to do so might not be a good idea. My wife, on the other hand, feels that having the child confront his/her fears will help to build character, and I somewhat agree with this view.
An important point that i think doesn’t get enough play is that what an adult considers scary, (or sexual for that matter), isn’t always the same as what a child might consider scary.
I remember watching one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies when my “nephew” came in. He sat watched with us for about thirty minutes. At first he just watched. He laughed little and said that it wasn’t really scary because they were “just dreams.” He fell asleep on the couch with us.
I would have to agree with you that forcing a child to confront his/her fears might not be the best idea. I mean, there’s a lot of be scared of out there, why rush it?
Of course, my husband thinks differently - I am constantly turning off the TV so my 6 and 8-yr olds won’t see whatever violent, scary show he’s watching. I own the remote, dammit!
Blonde
I’m an adult (although some might argue with that) and I absolutely refuse to pollute my mind with images of extreme violence and gore like those found in slasher movies. While not seeking to be overprotective of children, I feel it is very important to isolate them from graphic scenes of violence, abuse and mayhem. Maybe somewhere around age six to eight, exposure to science fiction and other obvious fantasy formats containing limited amounts of violence would be all right.
Movies with gratuitous violence are just plain inappropriate for small children. I don’t care if their parents are with them or not.
I’ve been a horror movie addict since the age of five. I used to watch the “Creature Feature” programs on the local channel every Friday and Saturday night on the local ABC affiliate from the age of eight on. I have fond memories of sitting on the living room floor while my parents lay on the couch, popcorn popped, sodas, we were poor, so this was “movie night” for us. First my stepfather, then my mother, would fall asleep, and I would be left watching the movie alone. When it was over, I would turn the TV off and make my way up the stairs to my room in the dark house, certain that the monster from the film was going to jump out of the next shadow and eat me…
Then next week, we’d do it all over again.
End result?
I’ve become a connoisieur. Most horror movies really don’t scare me anymore. A really, really good one, however, will keep me awake for a couple of nights. Starting in my mid-teens, I found myself becoming bored with “slasher” type movies. Guy in a hockey mask carves up naked teenagers— yawn. Throwing lots of blood and guts around will only cause me to speculate on the composition of the gore- is the fake blood a commercial concoction, or did the director make it up in his sink from clear corn syrup and food coloring? Are those chicken livers?
But give me a well-scripted, acted, and directed film (the special effects don’t even have to be great, I’ll cut a low budget film a lot of slack in the SPFX department if they’re making a good movie), and I’ll be glued to the screen, terrified.
Personally, I wouldn’t rent Hellraiser for my four-year-old niece to watch when she stays over on Saturday nights, but if there was an edited for television version of a relatively mild film on the tube and she wanted to watch it, I would let her.
Isn’t it fairly likely that your kid was just tired out or overextended, and so more vulnerable/nervous than he otherwise would have been? Stuff that might be great to a fresh, energized person can be overwhelming when tired out.
Anyway, ‘scary’ depends hugely on age and temperament. I tell simple fairy tales to my 2yo daughter, but not the darker, scarier ones that I think might be too much. I’ll wait a little while on those. (She doesn’t watch much TV yet and gets whiny when she does, so scary movies aren’t a concern yet. But FTR, Ursula the Witch terrified my sister when she was 3.)
I’m not a fan of violence in movies, and I wouldn’t let her watch much. Star Wars can wait a little.
My parents let me watch or read pretty much anything I wanted to when I was a kid. I turned out fine. If you don’t believe me, ask my invisible leprechaun friend.
A sane man! Are you married (oh, wait, I’M married, never mind). I agree with your viewpoint 100% – watching gore just turns my stomach. On the other hand, it doesn’t bother me too much if my boys see sexy scenes on TV/in movies – they’re at the age where they just giggle and go “eww”. Sex is good, death is bad.
I’m amazed at how much money the slasher films pull in, though. I mean, I saw a ton of them in my youth, but I was at a drive-in theater (remember those?) and no-one was really watching the movie anyway. I do have some horrible memories of a few scenes in one of the “Tall Man Walking With a Big Stick” flicks, or whatever the fuck they were called - involved a kitchen disposal.
Excuse me while I go have a big glass of wine, and erase that image from my brain right now.
It’s not just the slasher flicks - when I was in second grade, I watched The Witches (adapted from the novel by Roald Dahl) and was absolutely terrified by the scene where the witch pulls off her mask and reveals her true, ugly self. This movie was probably even made by Disney, but it still scared me to death. I would say that letting kids watch these horror movies or scary parts or whatever largely depends on the temperament of the child. I was (and still am) extremely imaginative and easily suggestible. Even today, it would be a horrible idea for me to watch a slasher flick or The Ring because it would keep me up for weeks- and I’m almost sixteen. Some kids are just scaredy cats and others can handle it. Of course, I think all younger children need to be protected from excess violence or gore.
I’m a huge fan of horror movies! The more gratuitous blood and guts the better! I usually just get a big kick out of picking out who lives and who dies and in what order and seeing if I’m right throughout the movie. Every now and then the violence of the scene will bother me but it’s usually only because of the emotion I’ve invested into whatever character is being mangled.
What frightens me, like Thea Logica said, is the well thought out “thriller” as versus the “horror” movie. Better plot= better chills
So, I like the scary stuff but as a child my parents closely monitored what I saw. They watched it first and if they decided I could handle it or maybe wouldn’t get it (this applied more to comedies, etc) I could watch it. I’m for parents monitoring what their children see…each case and kid can be different.
My experience is pretty similar to Thea Logica’s. I can’t remember an age when I didn’t watch the Universal monster movies at the very least. I also remember getting creeped out by aliens on the Twilight Zone, and when I went to see Batman Returns, the Penguin scared the living shit out of me (I still have issues with the nose-biting scene).
For me, it was the stuff that I read that scared me the most. I know that Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark kept me up many a night, and I loved reading similar books and scaring myself (after reading a story about a boy who’s family is killed because the shadows on the walls at night come to life and get them, I think I swore off sleep for a week).
I think it’s difficult with very young children, because you have no idea what’s going to be scary. I mean, who knew that Ursula would creep me out so much? I’d hold off on the slashers until the kid was about 8, probably. If you wait any longer, they’re not scary anymore.
It all depends on the kid. I watched all the old monster movies with my dad and brother when we were very little. My dad would send us to bed early and then wake us up when the movie started (so we got our proper sleep – geez!). I don’t care for teenage slasher movies, but give me Jack Nicholson in a mountain hotel and I’m freaking petrified! My kid watched it all from a young age as well.
I’m not an advocate of overprotecting a child (i’ve known a few young adults who’ve had ackward times fitting in with friends when getting into their teens cause thier parents refused to expose them to the real world) but when it comes to movies I think a safe bet is using the rating system. Kids under 16 shouldn’t see an R movie, kids under 13 shouldn’t see a PG-13 movie, kids under 5 shouldn’t see a PG movie.
If it’s edited for TV it’s pretty safe for kids over 10.
When I was a kid, I had a way too over active imagination. I also had two sisters who were about ten years older than me, and I wanted to do everything they did.
So, during Halloween when I was five, I begged my mom to go into the haunted house with them. This was back in the seventies, when rules about touching people etc. weren’t in place in establishments like that. Now I knew it was fake, but after getting into this house and being grabbed by strange people and seeing my sister pulled away into the darknesss…I freaked. Screaming, crying…I mean, I was a mess. Naturally that wasn’t allowed again until I was in my teens. I handled it much better by then.
My nieces are much more worldly than I was and never would have freaked out like I did.
It seems kids today are way more “protected” from sex and violence then I was. I think that’s wrong.
I don’t see what the big deal is about sex and violence. My parents didn’t closely monitor what I was watching as a kid, so I saw all kinds of violence and sex (not hardcore porn or anything, just movie sex).
I turned out okay.
I see my aunts and uncles raising their kids and they’re sheilding them from primetime TV? Even some cartoons! These kids are 8-12. I saw “Aliens” when I was 10 and I loved that movie! My parents took me to “Beverly Hills Cop” when it came out in theaters and I was only 9.
Look at Japanese culture, they have some of the most violent and graphic TV shows, comics, and video games in the world and all their kids seem to turn out okay.
I think that far too many parents are way too overprotective with their children. Sheilding them from anything you might consider ‘scary’ might seem better for them in the long term, but overprotecting them simply does them a disservice in that once they have to fend for themselves, they are affraid of anything, never take any risks, are affraid to talk to people, etc.
My parents never “protected” me from anything scary, basically because they knew that I knew what was enough. If it was too scary, or gross, I turned away. They trusted my instincts. I’m not saying that I was allowed to watch whatever I wanted, but if I wandered into the room while the adults were watching something scary, I was not shooed out. I left on my own.
On the other hand, even though I was scared to tears of any type of horror movie, I would force myself to watch sometimes just so I wasn’t the “baby” of the group. I had some raunchy nightmares many nights, but I was able to deal.
I disagree with shielding children. I personally believe it’s better to allow them to set their own limits when it comes to certain types of “scary” exposure.
I was allowed to watch or read whatever I wanted as a child. This led me to read books that many parents would have said were “just too much” for their kids- I was reading Kurt Vonnegut when I was 8. I had a large vocabulary, excellent comprehension skills, and a much better grasp of language, and I really think it was precisely because my parents didn’t take books like Cat’s Cradle away from me and replace them with See Spot Run.
I also had better judgement and better decision-making skills, and I knew myself better than most kids, again, precisely because I was allowed to decide those things for myself. I learned my limits early, and learned what I could and could not handle, and I held myself to that. I also learned early the difference between fantasy and reality, again because of this.
On the other hand, I have seen children absolutely ruined by overprotective parents. Their parents obsessively structure their every moment and filter every stimulus; nothing gets to their kids that they haven’t tested and approved and sufficiently watered down first. Kids like this grow up having someone else make all their decisons for them, and never really learn to distinguish what they can and cannot handle; someone else has always done it for them. As they progress through society, they are constantly shocked and dismayed by what they see, and their peers are merciless in taunting them for it.
I think over-sheltering your kids will make them far more frightened and unstable than a few late-night “Creature Features” ever could.
I would offer only mild encouragement for a child to confront a meaningless fear like not wanting to watch a scary show and it wouldn’t include the words scardy-cat. Your line sounds about right, but after he says “no” again, well bad luck. I would try much harder if it were something meaningful like fear of attending a social event.
Stephen King in Danse Macabre says that exposure to horror themes is ultimately good for children - the stories teach you that ordinary people can cope with awful events and the good guys win in the end. I suppose with some modern horror that is less true but careful selection should allow you to inure your child to shocks.
On the subject of slasher horror count me out. I watch hundreds of films a year but can’t find any justification or point in filmed gore.
