Parental advice needed

[Steel_Wind]

Father of three here.

Don't worry about the movies; Do worry about the real swords.

They need to be moved to a place where he does not know about them and cannot find them.

 

[Fenris]

With my 4 year old it was Peter Pan, the Disney version no less. That led to many sword fights between us. But the important thing was to make sure he understood the groundrules like: Don't attack anyone with a sword who doesn't have one, don't swing your sword with your eyes closed, and most especially don't swing the sword anywhere near mommy! The Mummy is no worse than Peter Pan, as long as you are there to explain things for him and establish appropriate boundaries for his play it will be fine. I wouldn't allow open access for as you have said you never know what may trigger nightmares, but I wouldn't worry about occaisinal consumption.

 

[Testament]

OK, firstly, I'll make it clear that I'm a 22 year old with absolutely no intention of ever having kids. I'm not a psychologist either. Take from that what you will.

Nothing wrong with a lot of movies as far as I'm concerned, provided they're the right kind. The Mummy films are really just a reincarnation of the old "saturday matinee" fare, like Errol Flynn films. Star Wars, damn near all Superhero stories (ESPECIALLY Spider-Man and Superman) and most of the early westerns are also similar. That is, clear good guy/bad guy dichotomy, no 'real' violence to speak of, and eventual heroic victory. I first saw Star Wars when I was 4, and absolutely loved it. ET, on the other hand, scared the crud out of me a year later. My friends were all similar, most kids I know, of both genders, love those sorts of stories. And we all turned out fine. Well as fine as gamers ever are!

Superheroes actually deserve a special mention. Show me a single young boy who doesn't love superheroes? Superman and Spider-Man are great examples. I'd probably steer clear of X-Men and 'purer' Batman material, given the moral ambiguity that's omnipresent in them (or maybe that's my Batman fanboyism coming to the fore.) Let the kid watch stuff like Justice League though, 99% of any objectionable material's just gonna go over his head.

Make sure he understands consequences though. No matter what you do, he IS going to emulate the screen action, and the sooner he learns to avoid injuring himself or others, the better. Don't shy away from disciplining him if he messes around either. Lock the real swords up good and proper, and move them somewhere else, I can tell you that all kids from age 2 to 6 have the equivalent of several rogue levels when it comes to finding anything REMOTELY dangerous. (One good friend of mine has a 2 year old who's just learned to open the supposedly kid-safe latches on their cupboards).

Let him be a kid. Heck, I'd be more worried about him watching The Simpsons than The Mummy Returns.

 

[Gothic_Demon]

As a father of five, aged 3 to 10, I hope I can help on this.

All children are different, and as many people have said it is the strangest things that will set them off and make them afraid or angry or violent. I believe (and it seems to be working with my children) that showing them good people are to be looked up to and bad people are to be scorned works well in teaching them good behaviour and setting them up for the future.

By this, I mean that (as many have already said) your good guys should be clear-cut and your bad guys as dark as they come. Kids then see the good guys winning and want to be winners, and thus good guys. Teach your kids along these lines and they should be fine. Beyond that, my son has a thing for swords, but has been taught that only a bad guy draws his sword first (and thus will never draw a sword from its sheath without someone else drawing one first), and that only the bad guys hit first.

With regards to movies, my 3 and 4 year old girls love The Mummy, all three Lord of the Rings movies, The Black Cauldron and The Dark Crystal. It's all about context; when they are young keep it clear and simple, as they get older show them more shades of grey, and how to find their own path through.

 

[Committed Hero]

Two Daughters under 7 (who would game in a heartbeat).

Before any program with violent or frightening things, I will tell them that it's only a story and that monsters et al only exist in the TV. Still, I stay away from overly violent things when we can (LotR battle scenes are just over the line)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Well, let me expand on that a little then. I hate the concept of children. By that I mean I can't stand the hyper-natalist "babies are the answer to all of life's problem" culture that I perceive in presently the USA. I think it is destructive and highly irresponsible, and I see it as being fueled in combination by a widespread desire to supplant real morality and ethics with arbitrary tradition in order to satisfy a conservative fantasy to recreate a world that never was, as well as the ever hungrier bottom line of the coporate world and its desire for stable markets and cheap labor. For quite some time, I also have been a strong proponent of negative population growth as a necessity for a universally acceptable quality of life for the majority of the world population. Combined with the fact that I find most children thoroughly unpleasant company, which I feel is in part due to lax and often poor parenting practices, my general sentiment towards human young is not overly positive. It's generally much more convenient to say that I hate children, although in retrospect that comment was a bit misleading for the sake of brevity.

Wow.

I can think of a few other brief descriptors for you, if you'd like suggestions.

One or two syllables, tops.

 

[BryonD]

My final comment on the subject will be this: unlimited growth is ultimately unsustainable, and when it breaches the threshold of sustainability there will be a period of normalization. What that means for human society is war, famine, disease and death. I'd like to avoid that if possible.

Yep, we need to get back to that time when there was a smaller world popualtion and we had no war or famine or disease or death.

Humans are the ultimate resource. It is easy to point to many many human disasters because we live in an unfair and unforgiving world. But the reality is that mankind's ability to provide for itself has done nothing but improve as population has grown. World per-capita food production is higher than any point in history and increasing. Life expectancys continue to rise. War, famine, and disease will exist for all time, but the idea that they are correlated to population growth is a myth that looks quite obvious on causal inspection and fits well with human emotional response. But it falls apart quickly under objective analysis of the data.


On Topic: I've got a 7 year old and a 9 month old. You certainly can not shelter them from everything. I don't think you can say that a given age is absolutely to young. Rather it gradually becomes less impossible to manage well. In the end, positive interaction with adults in their environment will have more impact than images on a screen. It is when those positive interactions do not happen that you get real trouble.

IMHO.

 

[reveal]

Well, let me expand on that a little then. I hate the concept of children. By that I mean I can't stand the hyper-natalist "babies are the answer to all of life's problem" culture that I perceive in presently the USA. I think it is destructive and highly irresponsible, and I see it as being fueled in combination by a widespread desire to supplant real morality and ethics with arbitrary tradition in order to satisfy a conservative fantasy to recreate a world that never was, as well as the ever hungrier bottom line of the coporate world and its desire for stable markets and cheap labor. For quite some time, I also have been a strong proponent of negative population growth as a necessity for a universally acceptable quality of life for the majority of the world population. Combined with the fact that I find most children thoroughly unpleasant company, which I feel is in part due to lax and often poor parenting practices, my general sentiment towards human young is not overly positive. It's generally much more convenient to say that I hate children, although in retrospect that comment was a bit misleading for the sake of brevity.

Ummm... Let's see... Poster asked for advice on raising his son. You come in and say you hate children and we don't need them. Two words: Who Cares? If you want to start a thread on how our world is coming to an end because of overpopulation and we need more control then fine. But don't threadjack just to get attention.

 

[DarkMaster]

Thanks for all your answers.
One things that seems to come back often is the fact that things should be black or white. I never taught about it before, and the more I reflect about it the more it makes sense.

I also realised that even if I shelter him as long as I can, my second son will probably not benefit from the same treatment. He will basically experience, through his brother, things 2 1/2 years ahead of him. Would that made him a bad person, I seriously doubt.

This thread also reminded me my youth. When my father and I went to see StarWars on the big screen (I was four). My parent then bought me Star Wars sheets. On the pillow there was a large hand drawn picture of Vader and I didn't want to sleep on that side of the pillow because I was too scared. I was waving my parents broom and pretending to be Vader. Now that I think of it I always had that thing for the bad guys, I remember watching GI.JOE and wish Cobra would win.

Anyway all that to say that I didn't become a violent person.

As for gaming with my sons, I really don't know when to start. I remember playing with a 6 years old when I was 12 because we were desesperatly looking for players and our youngest player 9 had a little brother. He is now a very decent 25 years old.

Thanks again for all your comment they are useful.

 

[Desdichado]

, please come back! All is forgiven...