Our Home Learning Adventure

I truly believe that learning starts at birth and continues until the end. It is the most natural human endeavor, like love. In fact the two are so closely entwined! Freedom to explore and play, allowance to self-direct, and a wealth of exposure to all the wonders, minutae, and even ugliness of real life are what continue to nurture the drive and passion to learn that children are born with. What a joy it is to observe, participate and learn anew along with them!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

How do you decide if a movie is appropriate for your child to watch?

I'm really just asking questions here, would love comments!

Are you concerned about violence, gore, sexual or sensual images, depictions of female and male role models, language, the blur between fantasy and reality, surreal images...?

Have your children seen any films that have affected them negatively?

What parental guidance websites do you use?

How important do you think it is that your child is developmentally capable of understanding and processing, not only the images, sounds etc, but the chore message of the film?

Do you discuss this with him / her?

How old is/are your children?

Would you take her / him / them to see:  The Fantastic Mr. Fox?  Alice In Wonderland?  Avatar?

Why / why not?

My son's (5.5) dad and I seem to have very different ideas about what and how much media is appropriate for our son.  I am struggling to come to terms with this, and help my son digest these three films he has seen with  his dad.  I would really appreciate any comments and recommendations on the above.

Thank you,
Belinda

2 comments:

Lori said...

Concerned about violence, gore, sexual images, etc: yes, somewhat. I mean, I let my son watch bugs bunny. But I don't let him watch things like the new Spiderman, Ironman and Transformers movies, though my sister (who is rather religious and HS's) does take her boys (same age) to these movies. For our part, we have watched all the Star Wars movies (many many many times), and the Clone Wars TV show, the Narnia movies, the Harry Potter 1, 2 and 3 movies... things like that. Not entirely ideal, but they contribute a lot to his imaginative world, and represent a sort of new mythology for him.

DS hasn't seen any Hollywood movies that upset him too much (though when he was about 3, he found certain Disney movies a bit scary, like Nemo). But he watched a National Geographic documentary about bears a few months ago and had trouble sleeping and got a bit clingy for a while. And there was one Clone Wars episode he found a bit scary.

I don't follow any parental guidance websites, I just look at the previews and read reviews in the local free newspapers.

I don't think it's necessary for a kid to get the ultimate central message of a movie - the point of a movie is to entertain, and if he's entertained, that's all I expect.

We do discuss films, and the meaning that is just under the surface. How the characters feel, what certain actions or words imply. Just as we do for the many novels we read that are usually considered suitable for older kids. We just read some Roman Mysteries books by Caroline Lawrence, and they have a suicide, major disasters, thefts, dog beheadings, and talk about slavery. But I don't think I'd take him to a movie yet that had those things in it.

My son is almost 7.

I don't know about Fantastic Mr. Fox, but we did get Alice in Wonderland on DVD. I wouldn't have brought him to see it in a theatre, but at home, we can stop and talk about stuff, turn down the volume, see it on our small-ish TV, all things that decrease the potential scariness. I don't think Avatar is appropriate for him, but I know lots of people took kids his age to see it, and they thought nothing of it. Personally, at his age, other than documentaries, I don't take him to movies unless they're rated G. We do sometimes watch PG-13 at home. I also prefer it if they're actually marketed to children, rather than an adult movie that's cashing in on nostalgia.

I really feel strongly that parents ought to mostly agree on what movies are appropriate for their kids to see. It's hard to know excactly what a movie is like ahead of time, so sometimes someone might slip up, but it should be the exception rather than the rule. And I realize that your XH is maybe challenging to get along with, but you'll have to find ways to get him to compromise. Just because he's not married to you anymore does NOT mean he gets to do anything he wants with your kid. And while you may occasionally have to do some damage control, hopefully it wouldn't be so frequent. Even if your views were extremely conservative, I would still support you in that. I might think you unreasonable, but I would still think that your XH needs to respect your wishes. You're in a hard place there - good luck.

lifeisbeautiful said...

Thanks for this thorough and helpful comment.
B