Censoring TV
Find a Conversation
Censoring TV
| Thu, 11-03-2005 - 12:49pm |
Just curious to how you control what your kid can and cannot watch on tv? I just read this article where TV Watch provides some great steps for parents to take to control their child's tv viewing. Have you ever understood what the tv ratings stood for?
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=55862
I mean I know that tv ratings exist but I had no idea what the ratings meant... did you? Good to know, huh?

Pages
14 year old Nicole usually watches music video's on Fuse or dvd movies that we bought her in her room. She's not much of a tv person unless it's with the family and even then she doesn't necessarily stay with us.
12 year old Jessica usually watches the Disney channel still or Noggin or tv with the family and or dvd movies we bought her.
I don't like alot of the racey show's like Desperate Housewives etc. There are nice show's like the biggest loser, three wishes,amazing race, and made off mtv. Those fall in our tv shows.
We haven't crossed the road of having problems with the shows they watch yet.
Good to hear that you are overlooking what your kids are watching and being cautious -- it seems like there are so many parents out there that let their kids watch whatever. After reading that article, I did a little searching on the TV Watch site and found that they provide you with the TV Parental Guidelines:
http://www.televisionwatch.org/site/c.dqLSI7OCKlF/b.593275/k.C49E/TV_Ratings_Defined_VChip_Information__Parents_Toolkit_from.htm
Did you know that TV means mature audience only? meaning over 17 years old
MA
This hasn't been too much of a problem with us. Dd had an early bedtime when she was younger and we just got cable two years ago (so we could get high speed interet). She's way too busy with homework during the week to watch much. When I see she is watching something iffy, I just plop down next to her and watch it with her.
Believe me, I'm not a thrilled the raunchy stuff out there - but I object, maybe just as strongly, to the sheer MINDLESSNESS of some of the programs. The one about the sweet sixteenth birthday parties, the one where people race to lose weight, any in which people are being filmed doing normal everyday things under abnormal circumstances (reality shows) ... ICK!!!!
JT (who wishes there were still only three stations and one of them was playing Bewitched right now)
I suppose the biggest thing that we do for monitoring the kid's tv is that they don't have tvs in their rooms until they're 17 y/o.
Really there are very few channels that I feel I have to totally censor for my kids. One channel is "Showcase" here in Canada and it can feature shows with very mature themes especially after 9PM. It features shows like "The L Word" and "Queer As Folk" and shows about different forms of sexuality and so on and so on. I think my 14 yo is definitely too young to deal with that subject matter (heck it makes me blush to watch it too!!!)
But otherwise I don't really go too crazy with censorship because I watch TV with my kids and when we watch together I can provide context and we engage in alot of good discussions if anything comes up thats provocative in some way.
One film my daughter just loves is Pleasantville. It can get a bit touchy at times featuring alot of teen sexuality. Nothing is shown but you sure know what they are up to. The last time my daughter watched it was with me and her dad. And they had alot of good discussions about it. And her friends were actually shocked to hear that she was comfortable watching that show with her dad. Even where music is involved I am an active music lover and enjoy many of the songs she does even if they feature the odd bit of profanity.
The thing is that my parents rarely if ever censored what I read or watched or listened to and I found that because I was raised with the right values overall, those types of things did not impact me. So I educate myself and I know what my kids can handle and leave it at that.
I personally watch very little television. I will sometimes tune into an HGTV decorating show, but that's pretty much it. I've never seen Survivor, Sex & the City, Desperate Housewives, Alias ... any of those. I'm just not interested.
Both kids have tv's in their rooms, but DH programmed them to black out any show with a PG-14 or higher rating. Truthfully, if they're going to watch tv, they like to do it downstairs because they like to be where everybody else is, not hiding up in their bedrooms alone. DD14 doesn't have much time to watch tv anymore. I know she tunes in to the show "Lost" on Wednesday nights, but I don't watch it with her.
DS11 watches Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon just about exclusively, so I don't bother with that either. Unfortunately, I do have to listen to it because he prefers to watch all those silly cartoons downstairs.
I do like movies however, and that's where I blunder. A few weekends ago, I rented "Saturday Night Fever" because DD and I were home alone and I thought she'd enjoy the music and dancing scenes. It had an "R" rating and I figured an "R" rating from nearly 30 years ago was probably about the equivalent of todays "PG-13".
Well! Was I wrong about that one! I had completely forgotten about the sex in the car scenes and it was rather embarassing. Major oops. DH and DS came home in the middle of one of those scenes and DH was not at all happy with my movie choice. I tried to fast forward through the sex scenes to get to the dancing, but it wasn't quite the same. Hard to say if DD was embarassed by it, but didn't really seem to be, seemed more annoyed with her dad for making an issue of it. We'll try it again someday. (Does anybody realize that the actress who played the hot for John Travolta dance partner and who wanted to 'make it which you' in the car, is also the same actress who plays Mrs. Stevens on 'Even Stevens'?)
Unfortunately, that's not the first time that's happened. I'll remember a movie as being really funny, or with great music or dancing and forget that there's nearly always terrible language or sex in them. Oh well.
bunnierose, I think this a great exercise so they can learn right from wrong -- it is important to be in your child's life as they grow because honestly they are going to learn it from a kid at school if they dont learn it on tv and it is great that you are there to guide them through it.
Plus, there are so many other other things that parents can do to control what their kids watch besides watch it with them like setting parental controls on the cable box, v-chip, etc -- I think that all of these are such great ideas.
What do you think about the government controlling what we can and cannot watch? Or do you believe that it the responsibility of the parent to control the television? Personally, I think that it is up to the individual parent to decide what can be shown in their home and not up to the government -- I could not imagine if some of my favorites were not shown like Desperate Housewives, etc because some parents were not restricting the television in their home. This is my opinion and this is why I joined TV Watch the other day -- anyone else agree with me? If so you should sign up as well :)
I find no need to use mechanical parental controls with my kids and never have. As you said, they are going to see this stuff somewhere, maybe at a friend's home, maybe when they're at grandma's house alone for a time, whenever.
"We haven't crossed the road of having problems with the shows they watch yet."
I don't have a problem with racy. I have a problem with stupid.
Shows we don't allow in our house:
"Touched by an Angel" - horrible twisting of Christianity - understand, I'm not Christian, but this POS is just awful.
"Smallville" - in the entire recorded history of mankind, not one fatality occurs due to death-by-meteor-impact - but the pilot episode kills of a number of parents this way - turned me right off this POS series day one.
"Medium" - anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-police, anti-brain, anti-male POS.
"Barney" - I met the inventor of the Evil Purple Dinosaur when she was trying to market it to rich kids as "the expensive plush toy poor kids couldn't afford" a long time ago and decided at the time if I ever had kids, they'd be raised to hate Barney the way that a Georgia Bulldogs alumni teaches his kids to hate the Seminoles.
"Sailor Moon" - pre-teen girls who save the world by manipulating various magical items that all appear to be items of makeup or jewelry - plus the Japanese version (the original) is soft-core cartoon kiddie porn. I actually had to rub my former SIL's nose in this because she was ranting about how bad US cartoons were and that she only let her little girls watch Sailor Moon. She didn't realize SM's origins or that it wasn't actually produced as a French Canadian product and translated to other languages.
Nearly anything on the WB where anyone who appears to be over 30 is automatically the bad-guy-du-jour.
"Dr. Quinn - Medicine Woman" - lone female physician single-handedly out invents, out performs and mostly, out moralizes all men anywhere in time or space. I don't know what lesbian ball-breaker invented this character, but this POS is just awful.
Special comment for the Eddie Murphy remake of the Nutty Professor: Awful, just awful. What was a sensitive and touching movie about shyness and social awkwardness was turned into a fat-is-ugly-thin-is-beautiful piece of what can only be called social-pornography.
There are others, and I screen pretty heavily, but essentially, I wouldn't have a problem with my kids watching actual porn if it were thoughtful and accurately reflected some aspect of the human condition (which pretty much still rules out all porn), but I won't let them watch a poorly conceived, philosophically shallow, but otherwise "age appropriate" comedy.
ILR
Pages