Kids watching horror films

[LoserHead]

This was a convo I just had with my DS (8)

DS - "Mum .... What's Chuckie?"
me - "as in the egg?"
DS - "No, the doll that kills people"
me - " where have you seen that??"
DS - "Everyone talks about it at school, Can we get the DVD? Aaron and Josh have it and so does Casey. They all say it's great so can I get it?"
me - "No! it's a scarey film, it's an 18"

Then DS1 (10) comes in ....

DS1 - "What's an 18?"
Me - "A scarey film"
DS1 - "Oh right. Doesn't matter though, we can still watch 18s"
me - "oh? who said?"
DS1 - "Well, everyone at school does. They're all talking about something called Final Destination, it's supposed to be the best film ever. And Corey's favourite movie is The Football Factory, and that's an 18"

Me - "Well, that's up to their parents. You two do not watch stuff like that".

At this point, they both look at each other and smile ...

DS1 - "Well, dad lets us".

Me - "What has he let you watch?"
DS1 - "Kill Bill 1 and 2"
me - "ok, so what happens in it?"
DS1 - "It's great, this woman gets burried alive, one gets an eye poked out ... "

Am I really being precious here?? I will be having words with the father but apparantly "all the kids at school watch 18s"

YANBU..My stupid MIL let DS2 then 6 watch sean of the dead and 6th sense, it was a year before he would sleep in his own room again.
DH grew up allowed to watch anything from a young age from horror to porn .

A child his sister babysat for ended up having nightmares after she let him watch a horror film about spiders.

I am 37 and even I don't like chuckie films and wont watch them

I vet EVERYTHING for our dc, mainly because I know what a sensitive soul dd2 is and gets scared at the slightest thing.

I can remember watching something like the Creepshow when I was about 9 and didn't sleep for weeks, ended up at the doctors. So there is no way my two will watch anything like that.

DD1 is pestering DH and I at the minute because she wants to watch Little Britain and Family Guy, but there is no way she is going to watch it.

My DD (4) and DS (2) are scared of the Shape Japer in the Numberjacks, so I don't think i'll be letting them watch anything stronger till they are the age on the video and then they can decide.

I can't stand horror films and only watched Silence of the Lambs when I was 18, I sat upside down on the sofa with a cushion to try and make it funnier!

Stick to your guns the age limit is there for a reason.

YANBU.

There is now way on earth I will be letting my DD (4.5) watch any horrors at all until she's out from under my roof, cos I'm scared witless of them myself!

Saw Nightmare on Elm Street 3 when I was 13 and didn't sleep with out a light on for 6 years. I'm now 33 and still keep a light on if I'm in the house with just DD. When I was 15 I actually got my mum to pick me from a friends birthday party cos they were going to watch another film from the same series (with her mum's blessing!).

DH likes that kind of thing (ie. Kill Bill, Saw etc) but he knows how much I hate it and generally will see it with a mate at the pictures rather than watch in the house. It really unnerves me that people find this kind of thing entertaining.

When she's older (ie teens) I wouldn't mind her watching something violent but educational (ie Schindlers List), and I watched 15 rated stuff like Pretty in Pink when I was 11 or 12, but it's the gratuitously violent stuff and psychological stuff that freaks me out.

BTW Paranoid - my DD is terrfied of the Shape Japer and won't watch Numberjacks either!

i rarely watch 18 movies myself and have no horror or volient dvds in the house tbh. Scary how parents find it acceptable to let kids watch these!! I wont even let dd1 watch the news, hollyoaks or things like eastenders! I think children are children for such a short time, why the hell would you want to show them such horrors!!

Oh and i would be hunting down ex h and burying him!

Lovemyshoes, I do the same. But, I do know from DS2 who is 8 that quite a few of his friends have watched horror movies. I do not know if it is in agreement with their parents though.

I do watch the news with my DCs sometimes, I would not leave them alone in front of them but I think RL cannot be avoided and that it is better to be explained than just "ingested". I do not let them watch soaps either.

Having posted further up that I said that I think it's really dangerous to let children's developing minds be exposed to extreme images, I have since remembered that for my 12th or 13th birthday I had a punk-themed party and sleep-over, which involved me and a gang of mates plus little sis (age 9) and her best mate, all dressing up as punks including pink hair and tarty clothes (!), and then watching 2 horror videos, one of which was Poltergeist. OMG!!! What was my mother thinking, to think that that film was suitable for two 9 year olds! Bad enough for older kids like us with vivid imaginations (I recall having to sleep with the light on for weeks), but for a 9 year old?!?!?

I wonder if it was just coincidence, but not long after my sister's friend was taken out of school and sent to private school instead and she and my sister gradually lost touch! I bet her parents didn't want her mixing with riff-raff like us!!!!!

paranoidmother my Dneice is also scared of the Shapejaper - My sister has had to stop her watching that as she was having nightmares, and screaming about the Shapejaper coming to get her.

Definitely would not let kids watch scary DVDs without supervision and parental interference.
An 18 I would never allow, a 12 or maybe a 15 if I could skip the more adult scenes. Also depends on the kid, some are more mature than others, my dd's older cousin gets scared of things in U and PG films.

NO NO NO! You are NBU. Dad needs to stop letting them watch such things right away. The "kids at school" may see such things, or they may just brag about them, but in my view it could be very damaging to a child at the stage of being unable to distinguish between fact and fiction to see extreme violence. I could go on about this ad nauseam, but I'll just say that I think you're right to protect them in this way. These films are classified for a reason. My 8/9 yr olds were allowed to watch 12s, and some selected (and previously viewed by me) 15s.

My 9 year old daughter has been getting nightmares recently - the reason? Not horror films but a story about time travelling she read at school. She mixed that up with Victorians ( the latest project at school) and hey presto - her own gothic horror where people come back and tell her off for what she is wearing etc! Sounds funny but it loses its humour at 3 am in the morning for three nights in a row! What i am basiclaly saying is that kids can become scared of things with very little prompting - just an active imagination:)

No way would I let my dc (8 and 6) even watch a 12! I am super duper old fashioned like that.

And my kids are the biggest scaredy cats and would have nightmares for weeks.

AND those films you mention are wildly gratuitous and grim. Some of their friends have seen Indiana Jones etc but nothing like that.

This thread is 20 months old.

truelunch Your daughter has a good imagination. DH and I are interested in the premise of what sounds like a Victorian Trinny and Susannah (who terrify me.Do you think writing about it might help? She could defeat the Gothic Horror Victorians that way.

Sorry for brief hijack of thread.

A friend of DH lent us Kill Bill, we started watching it on his recommendation.

When we got to the rape scene we turned if off, thought it very strange what some class as entertainment.

Definitely would not let DS see it.