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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

'Oh be careful little eyes what you see…'



It’s funny to me that whenever an idea hits me to write an article for RWAV, it never involves food – and HPS invited me most likely based on my food blog. I don’t think she’ll mind my rabbit trails, since we’ve been getting out of our summertime dinner ruts with the great recipes and ideas she’s been sharing.

Summertime brings lots of fun activities for kids – the pool, playgroups, popsicles, camp, family vacations, VBS and movies…to name a few. Some of the national movie theater chains are offering free or $1 kids movies throughout the summer and this was marked on our calendar as a must do. This week was the launch and I excitedly pulled up the list of movies being shown. All were rated either G or PG – perfect for kids, right? Well, not quite.

I knew the content of a handful of the movies being shown and the rest were a bit foreign to me…so I did a little research. Focus on the Family has a movie review section on their website where you can pull up a review on just about any movie you can think of. www.Pluggedinonline.com gives you the synopsis of the story line, the positive elements, spiritual content, sexual content, violent content, if there is any crude or profane language, drug and alcohol use/abuse, negative elements and their overall conclusion.

I found this to be a wealth of knowledge and crossed out a few movies from the kid’s series that my 4 year old impressionable son will not be seeing. As his parent, it’s my job to help mold and shape him into a Godly young man. There were themes, words, inuendos and storylines that just weren’t appropriate for his little eyes to see and ears to hear, even though they had the ‘safe’ rating. Knowing I can’t keep him in a bubble and that at some point he will face the raw truth of this world, I want to take his formative years where he is most impressionable and fill them with the tools he will need to ward off temptations and pitfalls as he gets older.

Proverbs 4:23 ‘Above all guard your heard for it is the wellspring of life.’

I won’t list the ones I erased from our list, as it’s up to each family to decide for themselves, and some subject matter is more age appropriate for older children. I do want to recommend you visit the website if you have a chance – it’s a real eye opener. This site might be helpful when deciding on a movie for your next date night too. :)

I hope each of you are enjoying your summer!
CC

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm so glad you posted this! I wondered the same thing when I saw the movie list but hadn't looked them up yet. You know I totally wanna know the crossed off ones. :)
Way to guard. Waaaaay to guard.

AmyA said...

I'm so with you on this. We are vicious about what our kids see and don't see, but I sometimes feel like we're the minority! I love that website and hope that lots of people take advantage of it.

Ashlie Miller said...

Couldn't agree with you more! I saw the lists available and thought..."well maybe there's one that meets our standards". Very disappointing. Amy, you might be in the "minority", but at least you're parenting right ;-).

CC said...

Thanks for commenting ladies! I'm glad I'm not the only one in the minority! :)