parenting baffles me

[jazzfish]

... good thing I don't have to do it.

Elseweb a friend asks, heavily paraphrased, "my preteen kid wants to read Hunger Games. i'm not letting her right now, because she's hypersensitive and it would freak her right the heck out. thoughts?"

Which to me sounds entirely wrong-headed. I was brought up with free rein in my reading material: if I could reach it, I could (try to) read it. The notion of telling a kid "no you can't read that you're not ready for it" is foreign to me. I could see "it's kinda disturbing and might be a little old for you; give it a try and we'll talk about it during/after, and if you're too freaked out it's totally okay to stop." But saying "you can't read that"... does that ever end well?

This is apart from the question of poisonous drek like Twilight, which someone else brings up in comments and to which I have no easy answer.

Thoughts?

(I'm not identifying the friend because I don't want to be That Guy With No Kids Who's Telling Her How To Raise Hers; likewise, I'm not asking her this directly because I don't know how to ask that without either sounding like That Guy Etc or making it her job to educate me on the nuances of parenting that I'm missing.)

Comments

[jude.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the movie and the child. My girlfriend K regularly watches R-rated movies with her 14-year-old daughter, but they are movies K has seen before and is reasonably certain that B would enjoy. Personally, I'd have qualms about watching an R-rated movie with my child if it were the first viewing for me, but I am both notoriously squeamish about movies and also more stringent in my views about what's appropriate than anyone I can think of off the top of my head except possibly my own mother. XD That said, I know that many of my friends watched "inappropriate" movies at an early age and both understood and enjoyed them.

and it's also true that the MPAA (which assigns ratings) is a seriously problematic entity, so a rating of R doesn't necessarily prove anything to me about whether the movie in question is appropriate or not.

TL;DR: Ratings are an oversimplification, and don't substitute for knowledge of the child and the movie in question.

[meghatronn.livejournal.com]

Agreed that ratings are an oversimplification. I think in my head, I had an idea of a gorey, violence-filled flick--something that I would consider inappropriate for a pre-teen child or younger. For me, it hits home the idea of having to say no to children about certain things. Ideally, you would be able to say to your child in all circumstances, "I'm not sure you're ready, let's talk about it" or "Let's do it together and then debrief." Absolutely, you have to know the child and a solid trust relationship can enable the above conversations to occur. But the reality is, even the best of kids with even the best of parents who use the best attempts at dialogue can beg and whine and be hateful jerks, trying to get what they want--which does sometimes force parents to draw a line in the sand with a very firm NO.

I saw my first R-rated movie at 14, too. My mom and 10-year-old brother came with me :) But "True Lies" I think is pretty tame by today's standards. I'm getting increasingly concerned about how realistic special effects and video games are becoming and what impact that may be having on any of us who are seeing that, let alone children.