Recently we took Evie to see her second movie ever, and a conversation that started with a friend of mine left me seriously thinking and considering some things more so than I have before. While waiting to go in there were screens showing different movie previews, all of which were very graphic and violent for such little eyes. Even my eyes didn’t like what I was seeing. It was pretty early in the day too for this type of stuff to be showing, especially when you think the theatre would know that families would be coming to bring their kids to the early show times.
It left me wondering about several things. How can I help protect my child from becoming desensitized by graphic images like this? How can I make sure things like this never become normal and acceptable to her? What do I need to do as her parent? The questions just kept coming.
While we probably wont be boycotting the movie theatre any time soon, I will be more careful and vigilant of things. Perhaps we will not go to a certain theatre since we know screens are there displaying constant advertisement that we may not care to see. I know that things like violence depicted in games, movies, etc does affect children of all ages. I see it daily through the children at my work. It is something we are going to be watchful of even more so now. I know as our daughter gets older screen time will be limited, and monitored closely too. I do not remember seeing this much graphic violence when I was a kid, maybe my parents did an incredible job of shielding us from it, or maybe this is just a sign of how times have changed.
My daughter is full of love, and so much kindness. I do not want these things to impact her in a negative way. While yes, she will know there is bad in the world, we are sinful by nature, I want her to grow up knowing that there is more. “We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 comes to mind of what I want my daughter to grow up knowing. I want her to remain sensitive to these things, I can see it being a huge blessing to her as a person as she grows up. I cannot wait to see what sort of person she becomes, and I’m praying for guidance daily because being a parent is hard. Guiding these little people is a challenge, and I hope that we can help form her heart into so much more. I’m excited to see who she becomes.
These are just a couple thoughts that have been running through my head recently as a parent.
Join Discovering Parenthood on Facebook, and Instagram to see what we are up to, and to stay up to date.
Important stuff… Its hard to shield our kids from things like that, though we so want to. I guess the important thing is teaching them our values and what’s right, and trust they follow that rather than what they see in the world.
Such good questions because there is so much of this garbage around it’s hard to avoid it entirely. I used to think about this at the movies way back, when people were taking their children to inappropriate shows; now there are far more made for children movies. However, there is still violence in a lot of them. I had to shut off a chicken (?) movie playing for an autistic child in the learning room at school (his EA put it on before her break) because it was agitating me. The friend chicken looked absolutely distressed, the scene was all dark, and in the background – shadows of an axe coming down. I had issue with the scene before when all the chickens had to line up and some were chosen and taken away by the neck. Neither entertaining or funny. Of course I warned E. I was going to shut it off and modelled my emotions of why; he looked at me seriously and imitated “scary”. It seems if we let them watch such behaviour we look like we condone it.
I think you are already well into doing the right thing to prevent her from getting desensitized or letting it become normal.
The best protection for children is from their attachment relationships with their parents. Within that relationship children are able to express all of their emotions and remain safe; safe because parents can accept these emotions, help children manage them, and never make the child feel bad about themselves for having the feelings. They learn how to cry and then adapt. They learn they can be angry and they’re still loved. They learn that they are worthy to you no matter what doesn’t work. Other children, who don’t get this attachment protection, look to their peers. Friends can become more important than parents. If these peer relationships matter more to the child then they have to be more careful to keep the relationship; there isn’t unconditional acceptance, crying could get them teased or bullied. Everly I’m sure will come home and tell you what happens and you’ll both cry and work it out together. Those other kids become what Gordon Neufeld calls “defended against vulnerability”, they protect themselves from being seen as weak by way of the brain shutting down. He suggests that children who are defended against feeling vulnerable have to begin to seek out more intense experiences to feel anything. Ick, like horror flicks.
Your relationship is her shield. Playing with friends is good, but letting them become more important than you is not.
Hence the name of Gordon’s book “Hold on to Your Kids”.
For interest – people like Gordon and Deborah MacNamara, who does the “Kids Best Bet” posts – have added talks about the digital world we now have, since smart phones have connected children to peers 24/7.
Just did a lot of reading and YouTube lectures for my essay – can’t remember who said it -Bruce Perry, Dan Siegel, – but I remember hearing ‘ have family meals, keep your vacations for your family, i.e.. don’t take a child’s friend along”
If only every child could have parents like Everly who think about these things.
Great post, you are such a great mom you have nothing to worry about with Evie.
I totally agree with this, like 1000%.
I was amazed when I would watch ABC Family or Nick Jr. with our kids. Number one, for the movies that they passed off as family entertainment. Dirty Dancing is a great moving. But it’s a movie about a young girl needing to step in to help a dancer who has to have an illegal abortion. I never realized that when I was growing up. OK, so that’s fine for adults I suppose, but on the family channel?
Or commercials for every. toy. out there. Or for questionable movies or television shows. Even the shows themselves. It’s one thing to let your kid watch network television at 9 at night, it’s another to be on a channel that is geared toward children and have to worry about hitting the mute button or flipping the channel.
I don’t think it ever hurts to be as diligent as possible. I am like you, though. I wonder why theaters need to play violent advertisements during the day. Seems like that should be something for after dinnertime or even well into the afternoon.
Great post!