I'm a worried grandmother and need some advice. Our son takes our 9-yr. old grandson to "scary" movies --
The Alien, and other monster-type pictures. (I don't really know what's in these movies because I never go
to them.)
I don't think they are rated for children even. This child is autistic -- high-functioning, reading well, doing well in school, we hear. I have seen the boy playing with his cousins, both hands forming "claws" as he pretends to be a dinosaur.
To me he looks scary! I have also seen him sawing away at play-doh with a plastic knife. I don't like the look on his face when he does this. Maybe I have a vivid imagination, am over protective...whatever, but I just can't think this is a good situation. We usually keep quiet about all our children's child-rearing practices. They are all doing a great job! Just this one thing. I did question our son on his taking the boy to these films, but he doesn't see any problem: it's an outing for father and son, and the boy "enjoys" the movies.
I'm hoping for something to back me up -- research or professional opinions, something like that. The boy's mother
seems to have backed off from the issue. At first she did not seem to approve of the boy seeing these films (to be fair, they also take the boy and his brother to Disney and other movies for children.) But now she doesn't seem to be involved.
Others in our family, my husband and especially another daughter-in-law who teaches lower grades, are bothered by this little boy seeing violence, etc.
It's a ticklish situation.
Any suggestions? Thanks,
As you say, it is a ticklish situation. Following your standard of not interfering with your children's child-rearing practices is difficult when you feel so strongly that this one thing, violent movies, could damage this one little boy's life.
As far as I can see, our world, and his world, is so full of terrible things that there is no way we can protect him from
them. He will see worse things happening on the news than anyone could concoct in Hollywood. He will hear of cruelty among his friends and their families. Limiting his film viewing to Disney is no help. When my own children were young, and mind you that was a long, long time ago, I didn't take them to Disney. I found those movies too depressing. I hated them.
But that's a personal taste. Children today aren't impressed by violence. They do learn early to differentiate between
make-believe violence and the real violence they see on the news, and hear about among their neighbours, but the whole spectre of violence isn't as traumatic for them as it is with you and me.
It certainly doesn't hurt to tell your son and his wife that if they are choosing a movie for the boy, there are better ones
than those they are choosing, but I don't imagine they will listen to you. They'll just be polite about it but ignore your
warning, feeling that you are actually out of touch.
And that's part of being a grandparent. We just have to let the kids know how we feel but not worry them if they don't agree.
When you see your little grandson play-acting with his dinosaur-like gestures, and displaying an enjoyment of violent
actions towards others, I don't think that means that he is going to go out and shoot schoolmates in the schoolyard. But then, perhaps the parents of those who do those tragic things didn't either. That's the worst of it. We never know.
But there ARE early signs that we can watch for and I don't think they include the ones you've seen in him. I'd worry if he had no friends, didn't enjoy anything, didn't respond to anyone, never laughed, derided people, sulked all the time, you know what I mean - if he was a totally asocial kid, then I'd worry about how these violent things in his environment might influence him. Just going to scary movies with his father shouldn't change him into a murderous child.
But if you're looking for some amunition to help you persuade your son to find less violent movies, here's something I just received, from another source. It's an ad for a book about being a better student, and one paragraph is as follows:
"With academic stress, peer pressures, poor communication and sometimes a negative environment, students today can face great anguish, uncertainty and heartache. Out of 500,000 children who try to kill themselves every year, 500 succeed. This number is way too high. Our children are asking 'what have they done wrong?' to bring about the experience of divorce, neglect, separation, hate, violence, and never ending traumas in their lives."
And then it goes on to sell the book. But it's a bit scary isn't it. However, as grandparents, all we can do is make suggestions, and we really can't afford to make too many of those because once our children begin to feel crowded by our "interference" they will make it harder and harder for us to know what's going on in their own families.
One little thing that can be done is a ploy my own mother used way back when I was beginning to listen to radio drama, see movies, and even stage plays. She would engage us all in long discussions of the story, with guessing games about how the effect was managed to make it seem as though a gun had been shot, or a building had been burned down. We became so engrossed in the techniques of make believe that any thought of the violence having been real would never occur. Mother was brilliant. No matter how scary the characters were trying to be, we children would be trying to figure how they made it look so real, because we knew Mother would be asking us later.
Of course that was before the days of TV with CNN filming wartime atrocities for everyone to see. The fake violence your grandson is seeing in movies with his Dad should just be comic relief, as compared with what is actually going on around the world.
I wouldn't worry.
Yours truly,
GG
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