Today I told my six-year-old daughter to refocus her priorities and to stop whining and throwing tantrums about not liking her new shirt. We were minutes away from the arrival of the school bus and I was trying to get her to eat some breakfast and hoof it out the door. I was not in the mood to listen to the fashion rantings of a six-year-old. Then I proceeded to use the old "children are starving in Africa" theme that has been handed down for generations to children all across America.
I very distinctly remember my mother telling me the story of children in India and Africa, I must have been about the very same age as my daughter. She told me that children who didn't have any food had bloated bellies and that the only thing their mothers could give to them was water. She described the mothers going to a well and pulling ladles of water out to feed their little, bloated-belly babies. This sadly gentle, but vivid memory has stayed with me my entire life and it was told to me in the early 70s.
Fast forward 29 years. Today's tale of woe in the world that I related to Skyler was as follows:
"Children are starving in the middle of the desert living in tents with holes in them, they are starving and disease ridden. Their feet are rotting off and you only have a shirt that you don't like to be upset about."
Their "FEET ARE ROTTING OFF"? How did this far more overblown and graphical depiction of children starving blurt out of my mouth?
When our daughter Arielle was nearly two and Skyler was three, in December 2005, we took them to see Peter Jackson's King Kong rated PG-13. My husband has nearly a 50-year age gap on our youngest child and admittedly, we have paid little attention to the MPAA movie rating system. The PG was all we really paid attention to, not being totally hip to the real difference between PG" and PG-13**. Midway through the film, during a rather violent dinosaur fight, Arielle who had been facing the screen, sitting on Victor's lap, did a screaming, mid air pirouette and managed to do a complete 180 to directly face him. It was then we realized there might be something to this ratings system. However, as soon as the movie was over, both children insisted that they truly loved the film and wanted to see it again.
Fast forward three years, both girls absolutely love watching intense, action-driven television dramas and films. The most favorite being "24" which Arielle had re-titled, "Go, Jack Go!"
She can't wait until Monday nights to see this show stating days before, "When is 'Go, Jack Go" going to be on? I'm ready for some action!"
I'm not sure how many other parents allow their children to watch 24. It is late on a Monday, school night. It is violent. But it has been incorporated into a family tradition of sorts, part of the routine of the week. In our house, it comes directly on the heels of piano lessons. We have dinner, Daddy makes popcorn and we all settle down to watch "GO, JACK GO." The Children know that the people are actors, that is is not real life, and that they use Ketchup to make blood. 24 is an unquestionable fiction. The tooth fairy is real. Santa is real, and the Easter Bunny is real but 24 is pure fiction.
Mommy and Daddy know a little differently, having lived in NYC during 9/11 as well as the Bush administration's ministrations of torture techniques and Abu Ghraib. We'll just keep that information to ourselves as we all sit down to family fun night on Monday with a bowl of popcorn, two little girls snuggled beside us and wait for Jack Bauer to portray this fictional character in his fictional world that can only exist on television.
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**"PG-13 rating is a sterner warning by the Rating Board to parents to determine whether their children under age 13 should view the motion picture, as some material might not be suited for them. A PG-13 motion picture may go beyond the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity, sensuality, language, adult activities or other elements, but does not reach the restricted R category. The theme of the motion picture by itself will not result in a rating greater than PG-13, although depictions of activities related to a mature theme may result in a restricted rating for the motion picture. Any drug use will initially require at least a PG-13 rating. More than brief nudity will require at least a PG-13 rating, but such nudity in a PG-13 rated motion picture generally will not be sexually oriented. There may be depictions of violence in a PG-13 movie, but generally not both realistic and extreme or persistent violence. A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words, though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive requires an R rating, as must even one of those words used in a sexual context. The Rating Board nevertheless may rate such a motion picture PG-13 if, based on a special vote by a two-thirds majority, the Raters feel that most American parents would believe that a PG-13 rating is appropriate because of the context or manner in which the words are used or because the use of those words in the motion picture is inconspicuous."
"A PG-rated motion picture should be investigated by parents before they let their younger children attend. The PG rating indicates, in the view of the Rating Board, that parents may consider some material unsuitable for their children, and parents should make that decision.
The more mature themes in some PG-rated motion pictures may call for parental guidance. There may be some profanity and some depictions of violence or brief nudity. But these elements are not deemed so intense as to require that parents be strongly cautioned beyond the suggestion of parental guidance. There is no drug use content in a PG-rated motion picture.