DD saw Twilight at a sleepover. - Page 4

[cschick]

Originally Posted by Linda on the move

How does that fit into "free range parenting"?

I really cannot imagine telling my kids who they can and cannot have over based on being too lazy to read the back of a DVD box.

I'm not going to be applying rules I don't believe in because some other parent demands I do. My house, my rules. You want your rules at my house . . . bye.

Seriously, you can't see how allowing another parent to impose their rules at my house is directly counter to the idea of "free range parenting"?

[springbabes]

maybe it's good i'm seeing this thread because i would have no idea to check with other parents before letting a 10 year-old watch twilight. in fact, several 10-year-olds watched twilight at my house and i didn't even think to call the parents to see if it was ok. some neighbor girls brought it over to watch with my 12-y-o and 10-y-o daughters. they already had a few friends over so i had 7 or 8 girls watching it in my living room.

i tend to be rather free-range with my kids. by age 10 they watch whatever i watch. before that i avoid any thing that will give them nightmares. i know not to let other people's children watch everything my children do--weeds, for example--but twilight, truly i had no idea. i agree with a previous poster who said if you're that worried about what your kids watch it's your responsibility to let other parents know.

[pardon the lack of caps--my shift keys aren't working.]

[dawningmama]

Originally Posted by bobandjess99

I would turn it around and say that if you are concerned, it is something YOU should have mentioned. Especially if you know your beliefs/restrictions are probably on the stricter side.
If you were truly concerned about something, I guess I'd expect you to mention it to me..like if your kid had a food allergy or religious restriction to something, etc - something that woudl affect/be an issue at a sleepover.
I think it's naive to assume other families even THINK about stuff like restricting tv. I don't think it's probably so much of a situation where the mom thought it through and was like "my 10 yr old can see this, so these other 10 yr olds probably can too" but more a situation where limiting viewing choices just dosn't even enter many people's minds.
Just because it's important to you doesn't mean it's even on another parents radar.
And that doesn't necesarily make them a bad parent.

ITA.

I wouldn't think twice about showing a PG-13 film to 10 year olds just because the movie was rated PG-13. I can't think of anyone in my social circle who would, really. I would expect a 10 year olds to be able to know their own boundaries and rules. My youngest is really sensitive to scary/thriller/conflict scenes in movies so she self-censors and walks out of the room when the music starts swelling to something scary.

[Storm Bride]

Originally Posted by darcytrue

My now 14 yr old DS watched this at 4 yrs old the first time. It didn't bother him in the least. He also has always loved scary movies, ever since he was young. They don't affect him. BUT I am his parent and as his parent I make the choice of whether or not he viewed them at what ever age.

Yeah. DS1 would never have been bothered by something like Jurassic Park. DD1 gets a little freaked out by parts of it, but still watches the rest. DS2 says it's scary, but he loves it. I just wouldn't let someone else's kid watch it at my house. I'm not sure what age I'd stop screening, though...

[BunniMummi]

Originally Posted by cschick

To tell you the truth, if some parent I didn't know all that well was dropping off his or her kid and started quizzing me, say, on what movies we were planning to watch, I'd be more likely to simply declare all tv-watching off limits than try to apply some arbitrary standard to what they can watch. And like my parents did, probably quietly move that child to the "do not invite" list for the future.

So we are supposed to get to know the other parents well enough to understand their viewpoints on things like this and simply trust them but you don't want people asking you those sorts of questions? You can't have it both ways unless you will only allow your kids to play with people you know extremely well, and at some point I can pretty much guarantee you that they will make a new friend and you will know squat about their family.

I'm not actually friends with all of the parents that my children come into contact with. They don't go home with people I don't at least know casually and feel ok about but I can't say I'm close to them. I don't always know what movies they watch or what music they like and they don't know those things about me either. So I expect to get some questions about what sorts of food I might make or what kinds of things the kids will be doing. It's not a slight on my parenting skills, it's just reality of having your kids hang out with people that you aren't close to and wanting to check that some of the bases are covered first.

Don't blame it on "free range parenting" I happen to follow that general philosophy as well and I would still run what I do with other people's kids by them if I thought there was any possible problem and yes, showing a PG-13 movie to under 13 kids would fall into that category.

As for the question in the OP. Well, I think I would have appreciated getting a heads up but given the situation where the movie showed up as a gift at a party I probably wouldn't make a big deal about it personally.

[journeymom]

Originally Posted by cschick

I'm not going to be applying rules I don't believe in because some other parent demands I do. My house, my rules. You want your rules at my house . . . bye.

Seriously, you can't see how allowing another parent to impose their rules at my house is directly counter to the idea of "free range parenting"?

I guess I don't know what 'free ranging parenting' is. What has this got to do with letting your kid ride a bike to the library or walk alone to school or take a bus, solo?

How in the world is this allowing another parent to 'impose' their rules at your house? Maybe it's just polite consideration?

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by BunniMummi

I'm not actually friends with all of the parents that my children come into contact with.

The older kids get, the less we know the other parents. With little kids, the parents socialize at the same time as the kids, but big kids spend the night at houses where the parents have NEVER met before and may be spend 5 minutes touching bases at the start of the evening.

Some kids easily speak up for themselves about not wanting to watch something their peers are into, and some don't. Seriously. Many kids this age have trouble voicing their views with their peers. It's pretty normal. And there's no way I'd want to send some child ~who I barely know~ home having nightmares because my kids are just in a different place with this that that child.

I've also talked to my kids about speaking up for themselves at other people's homes if something is one that they don't want to see. My kids do PG-13 scary movies, but not R movies. At if parents of 10 year olds think that PG-13 is no big deal, then how many parents of 13 or 14 year olds think R is no big deal?

It has nothing to do with *enforcing* rules. It's about encouraging my kids to figure out things to do that truly work for everyone. It's just about respecting differences and being polite.

[cschick]

Originally Posted by journeymom

I guess I don't know what 'free ranging parenting' is. What has this got to do with letting your kid ride a bike to the library or walk alone to school or take a bus, solo?

How in the world is this allowing another parent to 'impose' their rules at your house? Maybe it's just polite consideration?

To me, at least, it's a philosophy about allowing kids freedom to make choices within boundaries that tend to be slacker than seem to be the norm around here.

By the time I was 10, I had the ability to walk to the video store myself, rent a video of any rating G->R, bring it home and watch it with my friends without my parents even being aware of what was being viewed. My parents would have never have thought to call the parents of my friends to "ask" them if they were allowed to view some movie or another . . . because my parents wouldn't have been aware of what was being viewed. That type of day-to-day, minute-to-minute supervision was never employed. That's why kids whose parents demanded that type of supervision were excluded--because my parents trusted us to make good decisions, OR to get them involved immediately if the decisions we made went wrong. They weren't going to change their rules, or their methods of supervision because some particular kid was over.

But that isn't to say that my parents were uninvolved. We had many family discussions over time about the affects of media, of media-displayed violence, and etc on our own perceptions. If there was ever anything I wanted to talk about to my parents, they were always willing to sit down, watch it with me (if it was a video), discuss it without any judgment as to why it had been chosen.

What I can say is that I NEVER felt the desire to lie to my parents what anything I'd viewed (or read, or learned for that matter), never felt that I had any reason not to tell them about something. I showed this thread to my husband, and got a several hour story-telling of the many times he had lied/deceived his parents about the video-viewing he'd done at various friends houses, because his parents did have rules like "no PG-13 before 13", or "no 9pm shows before 13".

Ironically, given where we live, my kid isn't going to be able to have exactly the types of freedoms that I had--and kind of wish that he could. But I look around at how my neighbors (several of whom will very explicitly tell you that their philosophy is similar to mine) act and supervise, and I see myself doing things about the same way as he gets older (my neighbors have kids up through their late teenaged years). The kid currently has, and will continue to have, access to dvds that I consider to be of value, without much regard to rating. He's going to be trusted to make decisions regarding what he wants to watch. I really can't see him being 10 years old, and saying that "hey, generally I trust you to make your own decisions [within the boundaries I have set, here by including the dvds within the dvds you have access to], but when Bobby is over, you need my approval to watch anything because Bobby's parents are hung up on a specific rating system."

[cschick]

In addition:

Within the philosophy of the freedom to make their own choices . . . I will say that I (as the CHILD) kept myself somewhat aware of limitations that some of my friends had. I, my sibs, and my parents also had discussions on the concept that other parents were more restrictive, and that we had to think about the consequences of us and our friends deciding to violate those restrictions, given the freedoms my parents allowed. Including the possible consequence of that friend no longer being allowed to be a friend.

And that--giving the child the information to make smart decisions regarding possible consequences, is also part of it. In general, I and my sibs self-moderated up to a point. I don't recall ever renting a R-rated movie to share with my friends until age 16 or so, although I do recall renting some specific R-rated movies to view myself before that point. I recall some friends of my brother's getting in trouble for viewing the Halloween movies with him at age 15.

But from what people here are saying, that concept--making the children aware that some of their friends are going to be more limited in their viewing choices, and that they have to take that/the possible consequences into account when making decisions on what to view, doesn't seem like it'll be enough.

[buttercup784ever]

I don't think I would have thought twice about showing Twilight to a group of 10 year olds. I would have asked the group of kids if everybody agreed on that movie. I know there are some kids that wouldn't speak up, but I think I'm pretty good at noticing if a kid is not enthusiastic about doing something and would have had them pick another movie if I felt someone was uncomfortable.

I would expect that at 10 yrs old a child would tell me if they are not allowed to do something, eat something, or watch something. In that case, I would also have the group watch/do something else.

Would I have an agenda ready for the parents as they dropped off their children? No, probably not. There are just too many different "hot buttons" to try and have them all covered. I would expect a parent that has an issue, with movie/game selections, food allergies, etc. to bring that to my attention.

As far as not having a "high-maintenance" child over, I would still have them over, but maybe not in a large group. It's kind of hard when all the other kids want and are allowed to watch Twilight, and there's one kid that can't. I think in that respect, that parent IS trying to control other households, especially if they don't understand why their child is not invited to things.

IMO, by the time they are old enough to be at someone's house without me, they are old enough to be exposed to more mainstream things. Even if you don't agree with what they do/see, it's a learning opportunity and a chance to talk about a subject that may not have come up otherwise. I never understood the "I'm not ready to talk about a,b, or c, with my child" argument. Seems like a cop out. If they are not in physical or psychological danger (think loaded guns, hardcore porn, etc.) than why not use the experience to teach and grow instead of just getting upset that the big bad world is encroaching on the bubble of their childhood?

[roadfamily6now]

Originally Posted by springbabes

maybe it's good i'm seeing this thread because i would have no idea to check with other parents before letting a 10 year-old watch twilight. in fact, several 10-year-olds watched twilight at my house and i didn't even think to call the parents to see if it was ok. some neighbor girls brought it over to watch with my 12-y-o and 10-y-o daughters. they already had a few friends over so i had 7 or 8 girls watching it in my living room.

i tend to be rather free-range with my kids. by age 10 they watch whatever i watch. before that i avoid any thing that will give them nightmares. i know not to let other people's children watch everything my children do--weeds, for example--but twilight, truly i had no idea. i agree with a previous poster who said if you're that worried about what your kids watch it's your responsibility to let other parents know.

[pardon the lack of caps--my shift keys aren't working.]

I too am glad I stumbled upon this thread. I was just telling my oldest DD (15) she should have invited all her friends over for a SAW marathon!

I never would have thought to ask the parents.

[sunnmama]

Originally Posted by cschick

I'm not going to be applying rules I don't believe in because some other parent demands I do. My house, my rules. You want your rules at my house . . . bye.

Seriously, you can't see how allowing another parent to impose their rules at my house is directly counter to the idea of "free range parenting"?

But it isn't about you. It is about your dc and the friendships they choose to foster.

It is about being considerate, not being controlled.

What about talking to your kids and letting them have the choice? (invite friend and respect the parent's limits, or not invite the friend)

[cschick]

Originally Posted by sunnmama

But it isn't about you. It is about your dc and the friendships they choose to foster.

It is about being considerate, not being controlled.

What about talking to your kids and letting them have the choice? (invite friend and respect the parent's limits, or not invite the friend)

It is about me, or the parents are going to make it about me if the kids fail to make good choices.

I (the adult) am not going to implement the amount of _supervision_ required for ME to make sure that the children respect the parent's limits. The kids will have freedom to make "bad" choices which are in violation of their parents' limits while under my roof. As I said above, I get the feeling from this thread that making my kids aware of their friend's limitations would not be enough . . . 99% of the time, they probably will obey those limits; the problem is the 1% of the time that they don't.

I know that when I was the child allowed more freedom than my friends, I was the one willing to follow those limits, and it was my friends who were generally pressuring me to help them violate their parents' limits. And when the friends managed to pressure to the point of violating limits (or violate an limit unknown to me/us), it was my parents at whom the other parents directed the blame, not at their children.

It's not worthwhile to include those kids. And given what I see in this thread, the not-worthwhile-ness of including those kids and parents has grown over the past two decades.

[buttercup784ever]

Originally Posted by sunnmama

But it isn't about you. It is about your dc and the friendships they choose to foster.

It is about being considerate, not being controlled.

What about talking to your kids and letting them have the choice? (invite friend and respect the parent's limits, or not invite the friend)

But that works the other way too, doesn't it? It's up to both sets of parents' whether or not the kids' relationship is worth it. Does that mean that my child, who has fewer limits, can go over to the controlling parents' house and do whatever they would do at my house? No way! My kids follow the rules of the house.

That being said, I wouldn't NOT invite a child over if I felt the limits were reasonable, and I was willing to do them. Watching a different movie is no problem, but for example enforcing an early bedtime would be too much for me personally. But if a child is a guest at my house, I'm not going to try and use their parent's discretion when choosing every little activity. I have NO IDEA what someone else's idea of good and bad are, unless we've been friends for an extended period of time, and even then the chances of being wrong are pretty high.

At 10 years old, a child knows what they are allowed and not allowed to do. I really think that if that child goes to someone elses house and does something you don't allow, that is a discipline problem. If you feel your child won't speak up, then maybe they aren't ready to be out in the world without you yet.

[sunnmama]

Originally Posted by buttercup784ever

But that works the other way too, doesn't it? It's up to both sets of parents' whether or not the kids' relationship is worth it. Does that mean that my child, who has fewer limits, can go over to the controlling parents' house and do whatever they would do at my house? No way! My kids follow the rules of the house.
.

The way I see these things (when there are two standards of appropriate), it takes two "yesses" for a yes. The parent of the visiting child AND the parent of the host must say "yes". So, no, it wouldn't turn around and allow your child to follow your more lax rules in another person's home.

[buttercup784ever]

Right! So the more lax parent is expected to change their household rules (or lack there of) because it's "considerate" while the more controlling parent (I hate to use that word 'controlling', but for lack of another I will) is not. Which is why, I think, it IS about control and not just consideration.

All safety issues aside, I think that when a child comes to my house, and the parent has a laundry list of things their child can not do/see/watch/eat (aside from allergies), that is telling me that this parent a) has no faith in MY judgement as a parent,b) doesn't really trust that I will make sure their kid doesn't turn into a juvenile deliquent or a scared pile of mush, or c) is subtly trying to tell me how I'm lacking in raising my own kids.

I think it's sad, but if you are a parent with very specific rules, maybe you SHOULD only let your children be around other kids' who's parents' share the same philosophy. I think you'll be limiting your childs understanding of the world by doing so, but that's just my opinion.

[cschick]

Originally Posted by buttercup784ever

But that works the other way too, doesn't it? It's up to both sets of parents' whether or not the kids' relationship is worth it. Does that mean that my child, who has fewer limits, can go over to the controlling parents' house and do whatever they would do at my house? No way! My kids follow the rules of the house.

Right. If my child wants to go over to the house of a friend with more restrictive limitations/supervision, (a) that's his decision, and (b) thus, his responsibility to follow the limits of the house. If he doesn't like that, he doesn't have to go. If some other parent really wants to supervise my kid to an extent I consider excessive, be my guest.

Originally Posted by buttercup784ever

That being said, I wouldn't NOT invite a child over if I felt the limits were reasonable, and I was willing to do them. Watching a different movie is no problem, but for example enforcing an early bedtime would be too much for me personally. But if a child is a guest at my house, I'm not going to try and use their parent's discretion when choosing every little activity. I have NO IDEA what someone else's idea of good and bad are, unless we've been friends for an extended period of time, and even then the chances of being wrong are pretty high.

Right, and we all have our definitions of reasonable. After my experiences as child, the "watching a movie" restrictions are a trigger--an indication that there may be further restrictions/supervision requirements that I'm unaware of, and I'm going to get blamed for if the child violates them. Heck, I remember my mother getting reamed out by a mother because she allowed a bunch of girls at a sleepover to walk 3 blocks through a sleepy neighborhood to purchase ice cream at the corner store. In our family, the sister who was three years YOUNGER than that group of girls was allowed to run grocery errands alone to that store; my mom never thought that a girl of that age (11) wouldn't be allowed to walk to the store.

I'm not willing to play that game. I'm not willing to change my entire parenting and supervision attitude because your child is over, and I'm not willing to guess at what things you might believe "should be understood" and "are common sense". (buttercup784ever, you does not mean you . . . )

Originally Posted by buttercup784ever

At 10 years old, a child knows what they are allowed and not allowed to do. I really think that if that child goes to someone elses house and does something you don't allow, that is a discipline problem. If you feel your child won't speak up, then maybe they aren't ready to be out in the world without you yet.

In my experience [from childhood], the kids who don't speak up aren't speaking up because they aren't brave enough--they aren't speaking up because they really don't want to speak up. They want to do the disallowed thing, and they want an excuse to feed their parent.

[sunnmama]

I guess all I can say is that my experiences (both as a child, and as a mother of an 8 yo child) have been very different. The parents generally communicate freely (a phone call to say "Is it ok if we do _____? Just checking!" during a playdate occasionally occurs). No one is reamed out (good lord!). The kids aren't jumping at chances to get away with stuff. We just all assume that the parent knows the child best, and is the best judge of what the child can handle.

That said, I think you are on the right track with not allowing the kids to come over if they have different rules and you are unwilling to accomodate them. You are doing the other parents a favor, as well as yourself.

[cschick]

Originally Posted by sunnmama

I guess all I can say is that my experiences (both as a child, and as a mother of an 8 yo child) have been very different. The parents generally communicate freely (a phone call to say "Is it ok if we do _____? Just checking!" during a playdate occasionally occurs). No one is reamed out (good lord!). The kids aren't jumping at chances to get away with stuff. We just all assume that the parent knows the child best, and is the best judge of what the child can handle.

That said, I think you are on the right track with not allowing the kids to come over if they have different rules and you are unwilling to accomodate them. You are doing the other parents a favor, as well as yourself.

I think you're going to find things changing as your child gets older, though.

Most of the conflicts between parenting philosophies really start to emerge as parents start giving their children freedoms as they mature; as parents become less immediately involved in what their child is doing from minute-to-minute. 8 is barely the beginning of that: most 8-year-olds are still going to be under pretty decent supervision. But by 10 . . . a lot of kids have a lot less supervision. By 12 . . . the division between what parents still view their preteens as "children requiring absolute protection" versus "children who are quickly becoming adults" really hits.

12 was really about the worse. At 12, I and some of my friends had been allowed to walk all over our neighborhood for years, take the bus to the pool, etc for several years; while others still weren't allowed to walk to school. But generally, we used that freedom to go visit the houses of the friends who didn't have that freedom.

At 12, my mom gave me permission to take public transit into downtown Chicago all on my lonesome, or with friends. Where did I/we go? The downtown library, the Art Institute, the Field Museum. That was when the group really broke into two: those of us who had that freedom, and those of us whose parents couldn't even grasp the concept of allowing their child something like that.

[buttercup784ever]

Originally Posted by sunnmama

(a phone call to say "Is it ok if we do _____? Just checking!" during a playdate occasionally occurs). No one is reamed out (good lord!). The kids aren't jumping at chances to get away with stuff. We just all assume that the parent knows the child best, and is the best judge of what the child can handle.

Yeah, this would rarely happen at my house. I would call if we were going to leave the house in the car and go do something, but for just general activities...um, no. And if a child needs his parent to be contacted to find out what he/she can "handle", I really think that child is too young or immature to be out without parental supervision.

I just imagine the kids asking to walk to the video store. Wait, I have to call so-and-so's mom and see... what if there are 3 or 4 kids? Do I call ALL their parents'? What if they all say yes except 1? What if they all say yes, and then the kids come home with Twilight? Do I have to call all their parents' AGAIN and ask if they can watch it? It gets pretty ridiculous, right?

But I think the different philosophical ideas we hold are clearly spelled out in each of our posts. Would I call a child coming over to my house past the age of 4 a playdate? No. Kids come and go around here. It's not scheduled, I don't plan activities for them before hand. The kids decide what they want to do, and they do it. Nobody's been maimed yet!