Movie Night with the Kids

Movie Night

I'm sitting in my living room with my son and three of his friends watching Star Wars: Rogue One for his 10th birthday.  This movie is PG-13, and because they're only 10, my husband and I had many talks about whether it was appropriate or not for him to watch.  This strikes me interesting for me as a parent.

This is our third child, and our parenting has definitely evolved.  Child #1 had to both be 13 and write an essay about what the ratings mean and show an understanding that just because something is rated one way doesn't necessarily mean it's appropriate (or inappropriate) to watch.  Child #2 had to write the same essay, but we didn't care how old she was, as long as she showed that understanding.  Child #3... meh... we'll just decide what's fine to watch or not.  Whatever.  Good thing we don't have a #4, because that kid would be running around watching whatever the heck he/she wants whether we okay it or not.

Hmm... that sounds suspiciously like my upbringing!  Really, let's not talk about what #10 was allowed to watch.  Sometimes I pull out one of my favorite movies growing up to watch with my kids, and am appalled at what my parents let me watch!  The first time I watched Girls Just Want to Have Fun as a mother, I was embarrassed - "Tune in Tokyo" anyone?  And holy nude scenes in Sixteen Candles and Trading Places.  

Some of those things, though really weren't in the movies we watched as a child.  We had 100's of movies growing up, and they were typically recorded three per video cassette recorded from TV.  We didn't need things like VidAngel.  Network TV did all the editing we needed to keep what we were watching appropriate for general audiences.  They also edited movies because of length.  I still remember the first time I watched the full Sound of Music.  I had to rewind and watch "I Have Confidence" scene where she trips multiple times because it was so surprising and hilarious to me.  I grown up watching the shortened TV version.

Side note:  does anyone remember recording or watching movies recorded from TV? If you were lucky, someone was dashing back and forth to the VCR to press the pause button when commercials came on.  Or they had a new enough machine that had this cool thing called a "remote control."  High tech, man.  If the commercials were recorded along with the movie, there was an art to knowing when the movie was going to come back on.  I feel comfortable revealing the secret because it is useless now, but quite the parlor trick when your friends were over to watch whatever movie they missed on ABC last week.  The secret is that networks are self-promoting, and the last commercial was always one for one of their upcoming shows. 

It's always funny to me to look back at what decisions my parents made when parenting I hold on to, and what I discard.  I'm now going to choose to hold onto the tradition of watching a movie with my kids sans distractions.  Peace Out!