Teacher showed 15 film to Y7

[Littlepopsicle]

DS has just started Y7. All going well, loves his new school and is very settled.
Drama class last week, teacher told them the theme for this half term is something about haunted houses. She then showed them the trailer for The Woman in Black. DH and I eye rolled each other as soon as we heard this as we knew what was going to happen....no surprise, DS has been unable to sleep alone since seeing this. We are very careful about anything he watches as he has an overactive imagination, is easily scared and sleep is easily disrupted. DH is annoyed at having another disturbed night with DS and thinks we should complain to the school. Do you think we should complain and say this is inappropriate to show to 11 and 12 years olds, or at least parents should have been warned that this was going to be shown? Or would you say it's a non-issue, get over it, he's just an over sensitive child?

You need to work on building your child's resilience up. That's extremely abnormal to be so scared..even my 6 year olds aren't like that..its going to taint his childhood.

For the recent film it was a 12A but also a directors cut version at 15 I think. Either way, some key scenes were absolutely horrific and gave me nightmares too. I saw the play in west end 3 times and absolutely adored it...so much so, I decided to get it for a cosy family movie night...clearly not averse to horror or the plot in general. It's probably the most cheap / poorly executed version of an excellent play I've seen ever, btw. I still shudder when it shows up in my Google movies library because it was that bad and shit and nasty.

I wouldn't mention it to the school. If possible I would take him to see the play in London (age 8+!) to enjoy it the way it was intended to be performed. He will love it!

Your child will be reading the book I dare say, it's on a list of set texts.

The age rating decision can be read in full here

Thank you @MidnightOnceMore and@littleblackcat27
He said he wasn't the only one that was scared by it. But I also don't think it's worthy of a big complaint. If he hadn't had problems with sleeping I wouldn't have thought anymore about it. We're not completely precious about what he watches and we are trying to gradually introduce him to more things without completely terrifying him.

There’s no such thing as an “over sensitive child”. There are different levels of sensitivity in people that mean there are people with different abilities to perform different roles in society. I suspect this child is probably a lot more kind and caring than an insensitive child that just sat through it.

I don't think it is 'abnormal' for some children to be that sensitive at that age.
It will be a minority, yes, but not a trivial one.
Even if 1% are sensitive that is still 2 or 3 in a year group, and I suspect it is more like 5%+.

Usually I'd have a different view, but this particular film scared the hell out of me and several friends when we saw it as adults. I would not even now be able to watch it all without flinching/covering my eyes at certain bits, etc. I can't imagine how scary it would have been at 11. The book is not nearly as frightening. And I love horror movies!

Ignore the posters telling you your DS needs to toughen up, etc. It's absolutely okay for people to have different levels of sensitivity, and he's only 11. It probably makes him who he is, and might mean he's more empathetic than the average child.

I'd mention it to the teacher as a heads up. If they watch the movie later in the year he could ask to do something else (though he might be embarrassed by that and choose to watch it). If he does watch it, you can tell him everything that happens in advance which will make it a lot less scary.

I'm surprised at so many adults finding it so scary. There's very little actual dread/suspense in it imo. It's just one jump scare after another, said as someone who startles easily, it became more annoying than scary as it was just constant jump scares.

I work in a secondary.

Things to note. It’s a 12. Your child is going to see age 12 content.

If you email in this won’t be a teacher or content issue. It will be a child issue who needs support for their anxiety which you should be accessing.

To echo another poster, I absolutely do not mind parents emailing me with information like this and absolutely would adapt the way I handled it.

I’d have a chat to your son about the upcoming content and come up with a strategy. Maybe there is a recorded theatre performance version I could show instead, for example. Alternatively, I might arrange for him to work elsewhere for the bit of the lesson where I show the film clip and give him bullet point notes of what happens instead. This can all be done very discreetly and without others being aware.

I once taught a family who were strict Jehovah’s witnesses. Dad emailed (right at the beginning of Y10) saying his daughter couldn’t study anything with magic in. When our standard school syllabus was Macbeth and a Christmas Carol it was quite tricky! However, we are professionals and we adapted.

1. there is a wide range of sensitivity

2. having very young children who are not sensitive is sometimes a sign of something amiss

Being too judgemental is not wise, children vary widely - which is a good and natural thing.

@FrontEnd I definitely won't be taking him to see it on stage! 😂I've seen it and loved it too but I like scary/horror things...I think DS inherited his sensitivity from my DH....not necessarily a bad thing, as some of you have kindly mentioned. I'm aware he's going to be exposed to a lot worse things in the coming years (hopefully not from the teachers, though) but at the moment he's a sweet 11 year old boy who is easily scared.

I suspect the majority voting that you are not being unreasonable are because they are just reading your misleading title .

The teacher showed a trailer, not the entire film , and the film is rated 12a not 15.

The 15 version was the uncut film , they deleted 6 seconds to make it a 12a , but that’s by the by really.

I don’t think the teacher did anything wrong myself , and that’s coming from someone who as a primary school age child was shown the don’t play on railway tracks info film in school which ended with children dying in a railway tunnel , now that was trauma inducing !

Sorry this response is completely off the wall from someone claiming to work in a school.

'anxiety' my arse.

I once showed The Grinch (Jim Carrey one) to a year 6 class at Christmas and a parent complained I’d terrified they’re child!

Then speak to school.calmly and get a plan.

@DrFosterWentToGloucester23 has good insight to what a teacher can do - and good parents work with school on stuff like this all the time.

@Theraffarian I'm a 70s child and I remember that info film too!! In fact, forgetting how traumatising it was, we once started to show the kids this on youutube, after a conversation about those old public service films, but we soon switched it off!

www.bbfc.co.uk/education/case-studies/the-woman-in-black

It's a 12a.

So, should you complain? No. You do, however need to work on some resilience with your son, as to be scared to the extent of not sleeping is a little extreme reaction to a trailer, not even the whole film!

Teachers do get things wrong sometimes as kids can be highly sensitive. DD1 did a horror topic in drama in Y8 where they were shown clips of a few films and couldn't get to sleep for several nights. DD2 on the other hand would've absolutely been in her element.

I remember watching Poltergeist when I was 13. My dad was working away and though I enjoyed the film, I had to sleep in my mum's bed for a week. WiB is good but so sad and definitely disturbing as an adult. It has certainly disrupted my sleep before!

If I were you OP I would suggest to the school that the timing of this text at the beginning of Y7 should be reconsidered for next academic year. The children will be quite stressed out by all the changes they are dealing with in their new school, and may not yet have a supportive friendship group around them to help process it. Giving them such a challenging text to deal with at such a time is IMO cruel, and some children are likely to be more affected by the content than they would be in a more settled state of mind. At the start of Y7 some are still very immature and they will mature a lot over the course of the year. I would gently suggest to the school that maybe the end of Y7, if they have to keep it in that year's learning plan, would be better.
Personally I would hate to be forced to watch such a scary film/play at any age, even now as an adult, and think it is unfair to force people at any stage of learning to have no choice in the material they have to watch.

Just the trailer? Perhaps if the whole film had been shown I might be a little bit frustrated if I had a sensitive child, but not a trailer.

Could you perhaps watch the trailer with your child again and kind of analyse it with him and chat about how they use the trailer to build up tension?
I say that because I was a film studies teacher and my sixth form had to study British horror one year for their AS level. All the kids were over 16 but some were very worried about it. They had to analyse 3 films in depth (I chose two over 18 films- one being Eden Lake- if you know, you know!)
I had a couple of students express concerns to me about the topic, but we had no choice as it was part of her exam board curriculum. I told them that by the end, they would have analysed the films in such detail that they would no longer be scary, but simply fascinating. Which they did. Even the most nervous kid actually enjoyed that process and they all got high grades that year. The most sensitive child told me at the end of the year that it had completely changed their take on the horror genre and they had started to really enjoy it rather than be scared.

You could apply the same principle and just have a kind of informal discussion about how they use things like lighting, sound etc in the trailer?

I am over 50 and terrified of anything like this! Cant watch Horror films.Personally I would tell the teacher in private that your Son was worried and couldnt sleep properly.My Friends DD (yr10)went with her all girls school to see the play in London .They were crying all the way home ! I think Haunted Houses are an odd theme for a yr 7 .They have lots of other material surely?If he keeps waking it will impact his School work as well if hes tired.

it is very popular with schools, my ds saw it on stage

Utter bollocks.

Nothing to do with building resilience (which is mostly pseudoscience crap anyway) and sometimes clips or trailers are more scary than the whole film as they lack context.

Nothing wrong with being a highly imaginitive and sensitive person, in fact it's not wrong at all, quite the reverse. Lots of adults don't like horror films. I like some spooky ones and love a ghost story, but there are loads of films I deliberately avoid.