April 22, 2008

Fright Night. No TV week continued...

I make a very strong effort to keep my kids from seeing and hearing things that are not age appropriate. Six and 2 year olds should be 6 and 2 year olds for as long as possible. It is getting harder and harder every day to shield them from scary images and inappropriate music. I have decided that even Blockbuster is not appropriate. Just the covers alone for some of the movies should not be seen by kids. Heck, I don't want to see them. How many Saw movies do we need. And video games? Grand Theft Auto 75? I have no problem with them existing but I don't need them being shoved at my curious 6 year old just standing in line at the video store. Our local store decided that it wasn't enough to have multiple viewing screens of features coming soon around the store, now they have a monitor facing us at my child's level in the front of the line. As we were waiting patiently for our turn to rent Scooby-Doo for the 50th time we were forced to watch an increasingly violent clips from several new games. A man getting punched in the stomach by another man. A man then takes a crowbar to the window of a car smashing it into a million LOUD pieces. At this point my Six year olds head whips around to me with a look that says "Did I just see that? And should I see that?" I calmly ask the gentleman behind the counter if we could please turn the monitor off. "It isn't age appropriate." I was horrified by his answer... "I can't turn it off. I don't know how." .... "What about this button here?" So I turn it off. Are you kidding me? I'm not trying to be abrasive. I just want a pleasant trip to the video store. I think we'll just have to stick with Netflix. How do you keep your kids safe from inappropriate things. Am I being too sensitive?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had the same thought last time I went to Blockbuster with Ella. How many scary, scary boxes at her eye-level? Too many. FInn has a friend who won't even go in the place because he's scared of the boxes. Netflix it is. Or the library. Sheesh.

Gaea said...

I did go in last night and saw the manager. They had a few similar complaints and moved the video screen (it was off when we were there) and had moved scary boxes to top shelves. Progress...