I don't get it

[unregistered]

 

[Dianthus]

I was a Cub Scout leader for a number of years and it was a window into other people's parenting. A lot of choices are personal preference and I can shrug and say 'not the way that I would have done it' and leave it at that.

Some choices set kids apart, make it hard for them to talk to their peers and interact appropriately because of what's in their heads.

Like the 8 year-old who's been exposed to sexual information that isn't age- or grade-appropriate. Other kids don't really 'get' what's being said. Some leaders are horrified. Some are titillated.

One time in circle during 'what I did on my March break' discussion, one 9 year-old says 'I saw the Thin Red Line 12 times with my Dad!'.

Even allowing for exaggeration (say he only saw it half that much), that's still a lot of graphic war movie, which is rated 'R'.

I can't comment on this parent's consistency in what was allowed or not, but I just wanted to say 'I don't get it either'.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sugartitties]

I still have a hard time watching anything rated R or worse with my 20 and 18 year daughters. My 12 year old cannot watch anything worse than TV-14 and even then I might change it if i deem it inappropriate. I put parental locks on anything rated TV-MA. I work in a middle school and I hear what other kids watch. It truly baffles me.

 

[SmileyGirl]

The Walking Dead is nothing like American Horror Story
I cannot believe a parent would let their child watch it!!
I have a younger brother just turned 14 and he gets to watch The Walking Dead.
But there is nooooooo way my parents would allow him to watch American Horror Story.
I wonder if your child's friend gets to watch True Blood too

 

[Primalex]

Hm.

The Dark Crystal gave me more nightmares than Mad Max or Conan.

Perception is a bitch.

 

[Riles]

The problem for me is I have two boys, and I'm not sure if it's because they have both been exposed to real life ( their father and I operated a cow/calf beef business) up close and personal - they have seen various dead animals, both before and after the fact, by our hand, natural causes or predation. They have seen reproduction happening as well as births. My kids see a lot of life, and that means I have fielded A LOT of questions I had never anticipated from such young minds. But what it's done has eliminated quite a lot of fear of "gore". I'm also not sure if part of their tolerance is because of their genders - are they just hard wired to like stuff that would have made me squeal and duck for covers as a girl? Not sure. But I find with their friends, who are 2 and 3 years older than my own oldest, they are all about the shock factor in what they watch. So...I tend to be a little more relaxed with mine.

That being said, I absolutely censor sexual content.

 

[unregistered]

 

[bailadora]

Hm.

The Dark Crystal gave me more nightmares than Mad Max or Conan.

Perception is a bitch.

Isn't that the truth!

My 8 year old has seen all of the LOTR/Hobbit movies, and yet I'm still dithering as to whether or not she's ready for the 3rd Harry Potter movie. She handled dragons, Gollum, Orcs and Uruk Hai with nary a blink, but I'm still worried she'll freak over dementors and a werewolf. (Probably because I did - the werewolf, that is. )

 

[unregistered]

 

[Que]

When I was a child I saw Winnie the Pooh in the theater. It came out when I was 2 so I dunno if I was quite that young or if it was a re-release. -I do have at least one memory documented to be from 18 months, so maybe.

It was a double feature with a re-released "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" with Kirk Douglas. The squid gave me nightmares.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Hm.

The Dark Crystal gave me more nightmares than Mad Max or Conan.

I can see that. Skeksis were pretty scary.

 

[MeekMe]

My parents sucked at being responsible when I was a kid. Before middle school I had already been subjected to Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm St and other terribly inappropriate for kids movies. Needless to say, I had a lot if sleeping problems. Also, after seeing Stephen King's IT I refused to take a bath and had to be forced.

For the most part, I will not watch horror movies and I have a deep seated fear of zombies.

Surprisingly, I can watch American Horror Story without too much of a problem.

 

[imemkay]

Also, after seeing Stephen King's IT I refused to take a bath and had to be forced.

Surprisingly, I can watch American Horror Story without too much of a problem.

Oh my word, IT terrified me, too!

 

[IrisAlthea]

Isn't that the truth!

My 8 year old has seen all of the LOTR/Hobbit movies, and yet I'm still dithering as to whether or not she's ready for the 3rd Harry Potter movie. She handled dragons, Gollum, Orcs and Uruk Hai with nary a blink, but I'm still worried she'll freak over dementors and a werewolf. (Probably because I did - the werewolf, that is. )

Yes, there is scary but there is also dark and sad. My oldest seems to handle the scary better.
When she got Potter-crazy, we made the deal with her that she could watch a movie when she had read the book.
I was worried how she would handle the last two books, but she had no problems with it. A school play for little kids caused a week of night time drama because it had a theme about beeing left out of a group because of being different.

 

[Saucyminx]

I guess I have to play devil's advocate, why is sexual content more damaging to a child then graphic violence?

AHS is a rather extreme case and quite frankly, I wouldn't have let either of my kids watch it when they were younger--but I wouldn't have let them watch The Walking Dead either.

I've always been mindful of what my kids were watching and reading--I did try hard to be fair about it, and explained why they were not allowed to watch things, on those occasions.

And I made a couple major boo boos, the most egregious being District 9. They were 15 and 13, and I figured rated R, eh, there may be some boobies, big deal. Um no, one of the most horrible scenes I ever saw where they made the protagonist shoot an alien. It was gut wrenching, and really upset the 13 year old. I tried to take her out--she wouldn't go, she wanted to see the end. Not my finest parenting moment. Had there been some sex instead, it would have been a teaching moment but not overtly traumatizing.

Just my 2 cents, ymmv.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My parents sucked at being responsible when I was a kid. Before middle school I had already been subjected to Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm St and other terribly inappropriate for kids movies. Needless to say, I had a lot if sleeping problems. Also, after seeing Stephen King's IT I refused to take a bath and had to be forced.

For the most part, I will not watch horror movies and I have a deep seated fear of zombies.

Surprisingly, I can watch American Horror Story without too much of a problem.

My parents were very cautious about what I was allowed to watch. Even Doctor Who was in the "too violent" basket.

Then when I was 12 I went to visit my cousins for a week and they played R-rated stuff with people dissolving in acid and getting stabbed in the eye...

 

[MeekMe]

My parents were very cautious about what I was allowed to watch. Even Doctor Who was in the "too violent" basket.

Then when I was 12 I went to visit my cousins for a week and they played R-rated stuff with people dissolving in acid and getting stabbed in the eye...

My mother loves horror movies. I was seeing these things far before the age of 12 and there was no one to give me some reassurance. I was simply told, "get over it, it's not real." Well, more like yelled at. Lots of sex, violence, gore and monsters.
(._.)

I have a list if things to do differently than my parents.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Hell, the only shows I got to watch growing up were...

The Jackie Gleason show, the Sid Caesar show, oh and the Saturday Night Fights. Of course these were all in black and white. As I got older I was able to watch show like Combat and The Rat Patrol, Dragnet, etc. Yes, I'm that old.

As for my kids. The scariest show on at the time was The Munsters, so they grew up on that and The Partridge Family and The Carol Burnett Show.

Now...my grandchildren...they range from 6 to 21. What the young get to watch would have been banned when I was their age, yet by todays standards is tame. Them watching Harry Potter...no problem. Them watching the Walking Dead...no way. Dad has those scary things locked out as well as those with too much graphic life.

The kids really, when they were young, only like things like Barney, Telletubbies and Sesame Street. My oldest grandson did love to watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - the TV cartoon.

As for other peoples kids and what they watched...I didn't ask when they were over, they only got to watch what my kids could watch. They never put up a fuss.

 

[Aquagal]

I don't encourage the Wizard of Oz cause those stupid monkeys freak me the fuck out, still.

But we watch Resident Evil 1-6 as a family.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Modern folks never consider how contemporary much of our lives are. A century ago it was legal most places to marry a preteen child. Cigarette machines were everywhere 50 years ago. In the 1800s violence was common as was open sex by parents....it took a long time to travel by wagon in those days. Just a century ago most kids had full time employment and few went beyond the 6th grade.

 

[Lord Pmann]

I guess I have to play devil's advocate, why is sexual content more damaging to a child then graphic violence?

I was going to post this exact same thing. Mainly because my parents, particularly my mother, was concerned about sexual content of movies, but not other stuff.

I'll give you some background on young pmann. When pmann was just a pboy, he had some extreme taste in movies. I didn't realize the parenting fail until I was older. But my parents seriously let me watch whatever I wanted when I was young. And I don't mean like Smurfs. I mean anything. When I was 4, my favourite movies were as follows:

Fright Night
Silver Bullet
Lost Boys
Nightmare on Elm Street

I loved those movies. I could recite them. And I was 4. When I was 8 they took me to see Silence of the Lambs. They took me to see Se7en when I was a few years older. I don't know why they were so liberal about what I watched as my parents were reasonably strict about a lot of other things.

But I do find it funny that the only thing she cared about was me seeing sexual stuff. No worries about seeing someone's face bitten off. But boobs? "Close your eyes, pboy."

With that said, I have been pretty desensitized to scary stuff. I do find AHS pretty creepy and I would be much more apt to let my kids watch The Walking Dead above AHS.

Now I don't have kids, so I speak with zero authority on them. But I would like to know why sexual situations are more uncomfortable for parents than someone getting their heads blown off. Is it because their kids are more likely to go and have sex too early and less likely to blow someone's, particularly a zombie's, head off?

 

[lovecraft68]

My parents were.....absentee. By the time I got into a foster home I was thirteen and had already watched every slasher movie out at the time and had been reading Stephen King books since I was 8.

I'd seen a lot of domestic violence in the home and violence in the street in the ghetto I grew up in. I was stunted and nothing phased me.

Magic, featuring Anthony Hopkins.....scared the hell out of me. You never know what will affect someone and how.

For my daughters, I did what I could within reason to keep them from extreme violence and sex, but we are in the day of the internet and you can go on yuotube and search scenes from any movie.
'
I remember taking them to see 300 and Watchmen. I owned a comic book store, there were based on comic books and they wanted to see them.

During both there are sex scenes that drag on. And in both I told them to put their heads down.

The thing is for me the scenes weren't that bad as an adult, but as a parent I'm saying "Okay, Okay, I get it the point they're fucking, jeez how much do you need?"

 

[Saucyminx]

I have to say, I found the giant bright blue junk quite terrifying. (And we used to go to a porno drive in back in the old days when there still was one, so I was no stranger to gargantuan penii.)

 

[OTCurve]

But I would like to know why sexual situations are more uncomfortable for parents than someone getting their heads blown off. Is it because their kids are more likely to go and have sex too early and less likely to blow someone's, particularly a zombie's, head off?

I think you might be onto something there. The majority of people seem to have an attitude regarding violence of, "It cannot happen to me", at least where I live. Zombies, werewolfs, vampires? They are just stories to entertain, and all that gore are just special effects.

But sex? The need to protect their children from the big bad of sex, and that seems to be their priority, often to the point of ignoring mankind's capacity for violence against their own.

I was guilty of it too when I was younger. "It can't happen to me..." and then it did.