When is it inappropriate to watch horror films around DCs?

[coffeeandcream]

I honestly don't know - we are expecting our first in December and we have no experience of babies or young kids. We are the first of our friends and in our family to start the next generation.

DH and I enjoy thriller and horror films, but I obviously want to be a responsible parent. At what age would you say little ones become aware of the content of films their parents watch? Should we just stop watching these kinds of films at home?

Opinions and advice much appreciated.

C&C

I used to watch lots of crime drama when ds was a little baby and bfing loads - Wire in the Blood, Dexter, Criminal Minds. By about 9 months he seemed to be looking at the screen and "noticing" it a bit more, so I didn't feel comfortable having unsuitable stuff on anymore.

I 'watched' Apocalypse Now with my dad as a newborn, it didn't do me any harm .

I also 'enjoyed' watching The Shining and Terminator 2 when I was 10- my dad would tell me when to close my eyes at scary/violent bits .

Philip Larkin comes to mind...

I had a rule from DS being about 3 months that we wouldn't have adult TV on when he was awake - by this I mean something other than cbeebies/disney channel. Before 3 months I don't think he was with it enough to register much more than moving shapes. Not that I even watched a lot of TV then - just while BFing.

He's now 13mo and usually the news is on as background tv in the morning, often football is on at weekends and we have cbeebies on for a couple of hours in the afternoon/evening most days. If the TV is on now he will watch it sporadically and would be aware of some of the things that are going on.

We watch plenty of adult tv at night once he is in bed so if anything is on in the daytime that we want to watch we'll record it.

My DD is 8 months and I have watched the first six series of Criminal Minds and the whole of the first series and the current second series of Game of Thrones over the past few months but she is starting to pay a bit more attention now, so I need to start being a bit more careful with what she watches.

Even though she doesn't know what is going on, DD now loves the theme music to Criminal Minds - whenever she hears it, she stops what she is doing, whether that be BF'ing, playing or crying, turns to the telly and stares at it until the music stops and then just carries on with whatever she was doing before.

DD1 used to do the same with the One Show opening credits. We used to record them and rewind them - exactly the same effect every time. It's rather amusing.

Greenknowe- plenty of 10 year olds watch horror films, now even more so with the internet. It's not usually harmful.

In the US, the cultural "norm" is to be very careful what children and early teens are allowed to watch, and the religious/conservative lobby is far more effective at restricting things than Mary Whitehouse et al ever were here.
Yet unlike our 18 ratings which mean "no children full stop", they have the R rating for nearly all "adult" films, which requires you to be 17 to watch it on your own but allows parents or other adults to take their children to anything they want short of actual porn. Add the fact that cinemas can opt not to enforce ratings due to free speech laws and you get some kids with a very interesting early media diet: our BBFC censors are technically a voluntary private body as well as their MPAA, but here the Licensing Act requires cinemas to honour classifications unless the local authority in which the cinema is situated says otherwise (this is uncommon).

In particular Eli Roth, director of torture-flick Hostel, was interviewed by an industry mag (Empire IIRC), telling them he was SIX when his parents in unison suggested him seeing The Exorcist with them. You are right on to mention Larkin. They fuck you up, and they probably mean to, if they're exposing you to green glop-spurting, head-spinning, foul-mouthed devil children before you are out of first grade.

my baby finds screaming and shouting and angry noise quite upsetting as he's not used to it.

I saw my first horror film when I was 4. Didn't understand much of it but was scared stiff anyway.
My dad was in the Army and away a lot. My mum loved horror films but was too scared to watch them alone so she would get us to sit up and watch them with her. We would then end up sleeping in her bed because we were all too frightened to sleep alone

I saw all the double bill Saturday night horrors, all the Draculas and anything else that came along. I remember being terrified of my dolls because an episode of Supernatural had a scary living doll in it; other episodes included a werewolf and a vampire story which gave me nightmares for days.

I spent my childhood afraid of ghosts, vampires - even Scooby Doo scared me
I am still afraid of the dark.

When I was 12 or 13, I finally rebelled and refused flatly to watch Black Christmas with her. She watched it anyway.
I woke to find her trying to pick my toddler sister up to take into bed with her. My dad had been home earlier that day, been in the loft and left the loft cover off and Mum was too scared to sleep.
So I had to go up and put it back for her(!!)

When they are not in the room. I didn't have shouty programs on like East Enders when my babies were small and still up/napping in the evenings.

Personally I don't think it'g good for babies to hear things like that, however entertaining adults find them.

I did watch Saving Private Ryan in the cinema when I was pg with DC1, and was a bit concerned it wasn't the healthiest thing to put him through.

I would just watch them when they're in bed. Then you don't have to start deciding at what age they are taking in watching someone being ripped limb from limb and having their intestines eaten

I'm fairly extreme on this issue, I recognise that. I probably go OTT on the whole protecting young, vulnerable, developing minds thing. I am just really worried that what you pour through their eyes and into their minds during their formative years is what will shape them as an adult, and so I try to control that as much as possible. While I can.

We found we felt more comfotable converting to stuff like Dextor, the West Wing that is innapropriate for kids to watch but if its not understood (newborns) it wont affect them.

I also suspect you wont be able to keep awake for horror films till little one sleeps through the night.... when you can watch what you like when they are in bed

Watership Down should NOT be a U. What were the censors thinking? It's scary and horrible on a number of levels. I find it worse than things like The Shining and SAW

DD1 could pick up people's moods very young.

She hated Eastenders trailers in which everyone argues and was totally spoofed by a BBC news one. Ended with a woman running out of a building onto the steps obviously terrified. Even though there was a bland voice over tell you how great BBc news was it spoofed her every time.

You think you'll have time to watch TV anymore muwhahahhahhaahhah

Seriously the trick is to watch on headphones around babies with their faces away from the screen. Of course if you are breastfeeding when you get scared the cortisol goes into your milk and your baby gets all antsy. But it's that or cbeebies (which isn't so bad actually, it's a less harmful form of Mogadon for mummies ).

The vision of a newborn is pretty underdeveloped to start with - IIRC they can't focus beyond about a foot for the first few weeks?

We didn't censor anything for about the first 4-5 weeks as DD couldn't seem to see us across the room, let alone the TV. However we did turn down shouty things in case she registered them. After that we didn't watch anything scarey/sexual, just in case.

From about 8 weeks we've been turning her away from the TV, but that's because we're all PFB about the possible effects of screen time on her brain development...

She's now 12 weeks & has been vaguely imitating the sounds we make for a few weeks, so we've started not watching anything that's sweary etc.

You could just watch when LO's asleep, but DD cluster fed for hours (& often needed 2 hands to keep her latched on) so I would've got incredibly bored if I'd done that!

Agree with headphones.... only for special treats though, would be depressing all the time.

The music is definietly worse thaan any graphic content, thats why we watched stuff with complex conversations that dd had no chance with. I was cross that dh bottle fed dd to alien and the exorcist though....

DD cluster fed for hours - from bout 3 till 10 if allowed to so tv was a godsend.

Can't believe that some people are suggesting this is fine for babies/young toddlers as they have no idea what's going on . Of course they do. They respond to music, voices of people they know, and other stimuli.
This is in no way appropriate given the sound effects even if they can't see what's going on.
I'm astonished some people think this is ok - the screaming and scary music could be enough to terrify a young child without the terrible images.
Save your slasher movies until the baby's asleep.

Agree with Zad, it's not exactly a massive sacrifice.

C&C - when you have the baby, you'll know.

My DCs couldn't even cope with the sound of any kind of horrible noise. I started to watch 24 on box set and they became distressed whenever the sound became discordant.

And anyway, there is something really horrible about having a baby around when someone is being killed on TV.

And the strange thing was, having DCs put me off serial killer books/murders etc for a few years after they were born. It just seemed to awful. Loved them again now though.

I think most on here did say without sound.

And there's horror, and horror.....

Your tastes may change anyway when you have kids. I watched Elizabeth with baby DD snoozing on my lap (she would sleep happily on my lap in the evenings and wake up and howl if I put her in her cot ). But the film really upset me - that I'd brought my defenceless daughter into such a cruel world!

I can remember walking into the living room when my dd was a few months old and my brother was watching something scary and I was not impressed, even though I am sure she didn't register anything it just felt wrong!!!

I can't watch horror films anyway, I seriously would end up crawling into bed next to dd!!!