Letting a 6 year old watch the Simpsons

[sassypants72]

Please good people of Mumsnet help me get across to my DH that the simpsons is not really suitable for 6 year old DD to be watching.

He put it on tonight for her and I went mad saying it's unsuitable. He thinks I'm being very unreasonable, am I ???

We were never allowed to watch it and as an adult I still don't. It's not just the swearing. As our mum said, Bart Simpson is a bad boy but he wants everyone to think he's funny. But there's nothing funny about being bad.

You sound like such a fun family. One step off Amish.

Mine watched it from birth. They don’t swear, were not naughty kids, have not grown up to be defective adults (thus far anyway) and don’t seem to be damaged. Win!

It’s humour is layered. The stuff kids think is funny (slapstick style humour) is not funny to adults and the stuff that is funny to adults the kids don’t get and don’t find funny. Something for everyone.

I wouldn't let a child watch the halloween specials but otherwise there's nothing majorly wrong with The Simpsons.
There are other shows I would consider more suitable for a 6 year old as they probably wouldn't understand a lot of what's going on, but I wouldn't kick off about it.

It's one of those programs that needs a hefty eye on, the issue which concentrated hugely on the karma cutra (?) taught me to keep ears switched on, the kids didn't understand the episode and I didn't want to explain the details of the book !

There is nothing inappropriate about the Simpsons and i'd let mine watch it at any age.

I haven’t watched it since we had children so can’t comment, but common sense media is normally about right IMO. Maybe a year cautious but that’s all. They say age 12.

www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/the-simpsons

FGS do people really look up 'viewing guidelines' for a cartoon on at 6 pm... ?

They could do a lot worse than watch The Simpsons. Might make all those 'wrapped in cotton wool snowdrops' who can barely make toast for themselves at 25yrs old, get a sense of real world reality.

Oh the irony, - that life isn't always perfect and your parents aren't always able (or required) to protect you from all things - taught to you by yellow characters with blue hair. !

It’s absolutely fine!

I don’t think watching the Simpsons willteach you to make toast.

I wouldn’t let mine watch it because my dcs aren’t idiots and wouldpick stuff up.

The watershed only applies to swearing and nudity. You can still have adult content pre 9pm so I wouldn’t use that as my guide.

And I love the Simpsons!

Mine suffered no harm from the occasional episode. As someone said, the humour is layered.

The Simpsons is mild compared to early cartoons. I remember Tom and Jerry bring hugely racist with the ‘mammy’ character. They would also do ‘funny’ bits where one of them would get mud on their face and they would immediately do ‘blackface’. Although DB are were quite young, it made us feel bad and that it was wrong.

A lot of the Hanna Barbara cartoons were violent with every episode devoted to one character trying to murder another (Simpson’s takes the piss out of this with Itchy and Scratchy). All of this used to be on during the day on weekends.

However, DH and I did notice a very anti-Chinese sentiment in a more recent episode which wasn’t great.

My nearly 4 year old watches it occasionally and loves it. The comedy is layered and appeals to people in different ways.

Yabu

My 3 and 5 year old love the simpsons

I remember feeling very uncomfortable during some of the heavily sex-based episodes with a boy I was babysitting tbh. I think I was worried he'd ask too many questions and tried to distract him. I was a teenager though, maybe I was too sensitive to it.

My ten year old has been watching The Simpsons since she was about 4 (although there were plenty of times she technically watched it as a new born because I would watch it while feeding). She watches the 6pm Channel 4 showing and then again at 7 on Channel 4 + 1. She did decide she wanted to watch Hollyoaks in that half an hour in between ("everyone else watches it") and as watched Brookside at that age I said OK but she got bored after about 5 minutes. I recently introduced her to Futurama. She loves it. Bit more ruder but some bits still go over her head. Although me excitedly going "omg this bit is classic" and singing "we're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon" is apparently 'annoying'.

But there ain’t no whales so we tell tall tales

'There's nothing funny about being bad' - are you marge Simpson?! Bart is a little s**t, and is very funny with it. As far as I'm aware none of my kids see him as role model. If anything Lisa is a role model. It's good to be clever, not bad, in our house.

I think a lot of the adult stuff in things goes over young children’s heads anyway. That’s not to say they should watch them but I think we’re a lot more strict about stuff than we used to be.

I’m nearly 40 and I remember loving watching all the Carry On films whenever I used to go to my Grans house. They were filthy! But as a 6-8 year old I didn’t get any of the innuendos and just enjoyed the slapstick humour. Nowadays people would be saying my Gran was insane for letting me watch them!

YABU. The Simpsons is suitable for all ages!

It's on the banned list here. Was fine when we were kids but it has examples of pretty awful views and attitudes I would rather my kids didn't sit and watch

It's fine.
The adult humour goes over their heads. As mine have got older they've picked up on the politics and social issues.

I'm all Simpsoned-out, so we don't watch it, but the earlier episodes were incredibly clever and very funny. Now it seems that the characters are just going through the motions.

I think that a lot of the humour will go straight over kids' heads and aside from a couple of episodes, it's entirely under-10 appropriate. YABVU.

We love a good Futurama binge in our house, and that seems aimed at an older audience, mainly because of Bender. Still, Small Child has watched them since he was about 7 with no evidence of trauma.

Family Guy is better worse !

I read Asterix at that age - so, so, SO much went over my head that I now understand. Kids focus on the story they understand, the action, and the jokes that they get.

Heck, I watched Friends aged 10, and though I broadly knew what sex was, all the specific jokes about blow jobs, oral, premature ejaculation went straight over my head. And it was fine!

What would Lisa do?

I wouldn’t let mine watch it because my dcs aren’t idiots and wouldpick stuff up.

My kids watched it from when they were little. Thankfully, they are idiots, so they never picked anything up. 🙄