So, what do you think is too much for children to see and what have you found was too much for children that you know, either yours or others? What has caught you by surprise for being not ok when you thought it would have been? What did not seem to harm them, but lead to awkward questions?
We don’t watch many DVDs, but one day, we decided to watch some Mr. Bean as a family, including my four and a half year old. I know she is old enough to know just because she sees him doing something it doesn’t make it safe or ok for her to do it. Well we started to watch “Mind the baby Mr. Bean.” and that ended up being a bit much. For most of it, she was ok, sometimes lecturing Mr. Bean for not being safe, and laughing at the pooey diaper. But when he tied the balloons to the pram and the pram took to the air, baby and all, she burst into tears!
She was very scared for the baby. It took a lot of reassurance to let her know that it would be ok. We watched it to the end to show her the baby was ok. Of course we explained that the show was just making it look like a baby was in those situations, but that the real baby who played the baby in the story was not flying in the pram. Although I would never have shown her something so overwhelming deliberately I was pleased to see her showing so much empathy. The whole thing made me look at shows in a new light. We avoid most shows with violence, which limits viewing quite a bit, but this added a whole category that I had not thought about before.
I’ve shared this before, but my son had a really hard time with A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Not the abandon-the-kid-in-the-woods scene, which was the one I had trouble with, but the Flesh Fair. Robots (most of them not very humanoid, but with random bits of human looking parts attached to obvious metalworks) torn apart, burnt with acid and destroyed for the amusement of a howling mob of humans. Now, to my shame, I didn’t know the scene was in the movie or was that graphic. But even if I had known, I would have thought, “Well, he’s fine with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he really likes special effects and moviemaking, and he’s got a solid grasp of the process and that films are fictional and the people in them are actors.” - all of which was very true. But he got caught up emotionally in the moment, and it was too much for him. I asked him if he wanted to leave the theater, and he chose to hide under his coat until I told him it was safe to come out, instead.
More generally, for a long time I shielded him from realistic violence - the CSI/Law and Order and even ER type stuff. While he could still understand that it was actors and special effects, that kind of stuff can and does happen to people. The “ripped from the headlines!” tag on ads makes that fact inescapable. And I don’t think as a young child he needed to know that level of detail about the cruel and horrible things that people can and do actually do to each other in real life.
Every kid is different, of course. It’s more important, I think, to know your kid well enough and to research individual films to make decisions for him or her, than to blindly follow anyone else’s rating system. My kid loved *Blade *at 10 years old - but he’s only just now getting to an age (15) and maturity to handle, say, Schindler’s List or No Country for Old Men. Any parent taking a 13 year old to the PG-13 rated *Beowulf *probably got a lot more in the way of nudity (albeit computer generated), graphic, bloody, gorey violence and unsettling themes about sex and kingship than they bargained for.
And let’s face it: with the internet, it’s not hard to research movies these days. There are dozens of websites with scene by scene summaries put up sometimes before the actual release. Don’t like spoilers? Sorry, but my kids are more important to me than preserving my cinematic innocence.
I’m reading a really interesting book on TV and children: Into the Minds of Babes–I was going to recommend it to fessie so I hope she’s reading this thread. It focuses on kids up to five and talks about what good things kids can learn from TV, as well as the harm that can occur.
Anyway, I’m very strict with my kids’ media viewing. But some odd things have affected them strongly–several months ago we watched Cheaper by the Dozen, the old 50’s film, and they enjoyed it, but right at the end, the father dies. He’s not shown dying; the narrator talks about it a little bit and the family is shown afterwards, with the mother coping and so on. My 4-yo caught it and was really affected by it–for months afterward, she frequently asked why the daddy in the movie died. I think the fact that the movie was a realistic one made it more real to her. Whether the incident was an OK or bad thing I don’t know.
But I do tend to err on the side of caution; partly because I don’t think that kids tell parents everything that worries them. I know I didn’t. Kids will frequently go along with things they don’t really like in order to please their parents or because they think they have to.
I’m not a parent, but other than knowing your kid and what he/she is ready for, The only stuff I find unacceptable is torture, and cruelty to animals. I don’t mind blood and gore, since it’s easy to explain, and justifiable violence is fine. Sexual situations and nudity are fine also. It’s a lot easier to have an open conversation about those topics if you don’t make a big deal out of them. Graphic rape scenes have always struck me as gratuitous and I might very well edit those out via the scene advance. The real baseline though is knowing your kid. I’m around friends’ children often and some of them are bloodthirsty little tykes, while others can’t stand the sight of blood at all. I’ve known a five year old who loves the scene in Dead Alive where the protagonist attacks a zombie’s head with a lawnmower. He laughs his little ass off every time. Other kids would be absolutely terrified. You have to weigh that knowledge against your own morals and decide on each film individually. I fully concur with Whynot in that you NEED to read reviews and make an informed decision rather than relying on blanket rating bans.
It’s hard to tell exactly what it is that will push a child’s buttons - what one child finds okay (or maybe even funny), another might find very distressing.
My mother has a story about watching Sesame Street with me back in the day, when I burst into tears over this skit. Apparently I just couldn’t deal with the idea of the horse destroying such a pretty clock for no reason at all - while I’m sure the writer meant for it to be incredibly funny in a “clock go boom, YAY!” kind of way. She says I was a strangely sensitive child, so the oddest things would set me off.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that every child is different, so parents need to make a decision based on what it is that their own child might be sensitive to.
I remember bawling my eyes out over old Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin comedies. Everyone would be laughing about how Dean took Jerry’s towel in the locker room and poor Jerry had soap in his eyes and wandered out of the bathroom in just a towel and I’d be empathizing my little eyes out instead of laughing. Couldn’t deal with anything like that, Three Stooges, Abbot and Costello, etc.
With my own kidlet, I was more careful about violent movies than movies that might have had a bit of nudity or sexual situations. I figure sex is a normal part of life, while hopefully violence isn’t. He’s fifteen and of course digs war movies and blow-em-up video games now, but it still horribly squeamish about blood. Every time the vampires were onscreen in I Am Legend he wound up running into the lobby.
In my extended family and friends, I noticed that kids that watch (what I feel is) too much too soon just seem to get jaded. Let kids be kids, let them keep a bit of innocence and parents should parent and pay attention to what the kids are doing.
Realistic violence, some cartoon violence as well though, sexual content, and horror.
I’m pretty strict about the kids viewing, and take the ratings pretty seriously. Though if it’s something I’ve watched, and know it’s not going to give them nightmares, or introduce them to something I don’t want them exposed to, I’ll give the green light.
They love Futurama, and have seen a few episodes of Robot Chicken, but thats about as Adult Swim as we’re going to go. The other night we had one of the Law and Order spin offs on, and they were discussing rape. My six year old wanted to know what rape was. She doesn’t even know what sex is, how was I going to go into rape? It was our fault for having her in the room when it was on, yes.
Most of today’s television programming we don’t allow the kids to watch. So the television is not on a lot, and when it is, we have TV Land and other shows that they can watch. My oldest at twelve seems to ‘suffer’ the most for this, because she isn’t up to date on all the other shows these kids are watching, I reassure her that she isn’t missing anything, and this only comes up once a month or so. So her ‘suffering’ is imagined.
When we do watch TV, if it’s not suitable for the kids, we record it to the DVR to watch at a later date. Other than maybe a handful of shows, we watch a lot of DIY, HGTV, science type, nature type, and history based shows. I watch a lot of TCM as well. We’re not suffering for this either. I never watched Fear Factor, or anything like it, it never interested me.
Well, I’d disagree here. Kids are naturally pretty violent, most of 'em. Not that I let my kids watch violent things; I restrict both sex and violence.
Yes, sex is a normal part of life. But TV sex isn’t normal at all. I don’t want TV to inform my kids about sex, because most of it isn’t natural or right at all. It’s my job to teach kids about how sex actually works, and I don’t want TV doing it for me. I think that the commercialized sexual atmosphere of our culture poisons all of our ideas about sex.
I totally agree with this. For instance, I would have no problem with my daughter watching Confetti, which features a nudist couple, and so plenty of wagging wang out for all to see. Because it’s not about sex, and it’s not aberrant or screwed up about sex and the human body. I’m much more concerned about her seeing the ubiquitous weight loss product ads that come on during our favorite cooking shows. However, I don’t want her watching anything from Victoria’s Secret ads to hard core porn because it doesn’t depict private parts, sexuality, and the act of sex in a normal, healthy way.
Meanwhile, violence *qua *violence isn’t too much of a concern. She watches her dad play computer games and “kill” monsters. She adores watching nature programs with wolves ripping meat from carcasses and hippos charging at Brady Barr. I try to keep her away from things that she finds scary, but sometimes it’s hard to judge. Hippo trying to kill Brady Barr = funny, python trying to kill Brady Barr = terrifying.
One thing that had me leaping for the remote control recently was Family Guy. Usually the jokes just whoosh by her, but when Peter started lecturing, "Black people are different from us . . . " I practically dislocated my shoulder to speed-change the channel. So, sex, violence, and **satire **can all be dangerous.
Raises eyebrow I’ve heard people mention offhandedly Robot Chicken in the same breath as Futurama before, but I would be okay with my kids watching Futurama *years * before I would let them near Robot Chicken. Fart and poop jokes aside, RC occasionally gets downright disturbing. For example, you brought up CSI rape – RC has a sketch in which a man rapes Snuggles the Bear, who is depicted as a child, crying out in distress. Not something I would be okay with someone under the age of 15 or so (depending on the kid) seeing. And just because it’s stop motion animation doesn’t mean I’d be okay with the violence either. Robot Chicken is a pretty nasty show at times.
Actually, if you look closely these threads are, or at least are meant to be, different. This one I specifically asked what is too much for kids, specifically what you have seen is too much for kids. Thus my example of my daughter being overwhelmed by a baby seemingly in danger. Also very much in answer to this question was Mahna Mahna’s response about the clock skit on Sesame Street.
The other thread is about what parents shield their children from. Now, these are related, but not nearly the same. While it would be reprehensible to show children content in an effort to disturb them, I think what children have actually been harmed or upset by merits discussion.
I agree. I have two season’s on DVD, and skip over the parts I’m uncomfortable with. A lot of it is very obscure though. And they don’t watch a lot of it, really. I only brought that up as the outside extreme. I should have clarified. Apologies.
Oh, okay. Yeah, if you have it on DVD and can pick and choose, that’s something else entirely. Some of the sketches I would be fine with kids seeing. I just wouldn’t pop my kids in front of an epsodes, though.
My daughter told my wife on the phone that she had an NFL game on TV and one of her kids looked and said “Papa,” which translates to “Papa had that stuff on his TV recently.” I am Papa, of course.
I really don’t remember doing so, but my wife laughed at the recounting and said we turned it off very quickly because of the violence.
It’s pretty odd what we let the kids see and not see. The twins are 5 now and there’s been a ton of PG and some PG-13 movies we’re pretty okay with them seeing. (Spiderman, X-men, and the like) They just watched Twister tonight and aside from me saying ‘Pretty much anything you don’t understand from that guy is a bad word’, they were okay with.
That said, we didn’t get 14 seconds into the Simpsons Movie, with itchy just about to impale scratchy, when i hit the pause and said ‘ooooookay, time to watch something ELSE’.
What caught me COMPLETELY unaware was Stargate Atlantis. This particular episode had the characters living out their nightmares…one of the women dreams of an Aliens like chest burster…and it’s GRAPHIC. Blood and screaming and an insectoid thing coming out of her stomach…and neither parent was close enough to a remote to do anything about it. Totally unexpected for that show, at that time of night.