Red in Tooth and Claw

I cannot speak to the subject of the video to which you refer, i've not seen it.

Whereas i think it would be a bad idea to stress such violence to children, to hide it would be as foolish, if not more so. Children know about violence and death. They are fascinated by it. Children's songs down through the ages display this fascination with violence and death . . .

There was a man of double deed
Who sowed his garden full of seed
And when the seed began to grow
'Twas like a garden full of snow
And when the snow began to fall
'Twas like some birds upon a wall
And when the birds began to fly
'Twas like a shipwreck in the sky
And when the sky began to crack
'Twas like a stick across my back
And when my back began to bleed
Then i was dead and dead indeed.


"Oranges and Lemons" say the bells of St. Clements.
"You owe me five farthings" say the bells of St. Martins.
"When will you pay me" say the bells of Old Bailey.
"When I grow rich" say the bells of Shoreditch.
"When will that be" say the bells of Stepney.
"I do not know" says the great Bell of Bow.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed.
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
(Chip chop, chip chop, the last man's dead.)

The latter is used in a children's game, for which Wikipedia posts this article.

I think perhaps it best to try to help them take violence and death in stride. Not something which you either hide from them (that never works, they know somethings up), nor something which you rub their noses in.

hmm.. was it bloody?
Or was it just implied violence?

I think there is a bit difference between Natural Violence and Problem-Solving Violence.

A possibly apocryphal story about Jurassic Park.

A little girl watched while two dinosaurs grabbed a lawyer and ripped him asunder. The little girl wailed, "Mommie! Look! They aren't sharing!"

My older son sat through a reading of Chicken Little. When Foxy Loxy had disposed of the Sky Is Falling Committee, he protested, "Foxy Loxy lied!"

Violence that grows out of the plot stimulates questions. Unnecessary violence produces imitation.

I happen to believe that there is a fundamental moral difference between humans killing humans on the one hand, versus humans killing animals or animals killing each other on the other hand. I suppose the reason you won't let sozlet watch violence is because you don't want to have her hardened against the immorality of human-human violence. Therefore it makes sense to me that your choices of what you let her watch generally reflect that. It would seem kind of phony to me if you should eat steak for dinner while being all prissy about letting Sozlet see how humans or lions make their steaks. I see no fundamental difference whether it's "real" animals or dinos we're talking about. Dino, bird or mammal, meat-eating is gory, and she might as well see that it is.

Personally I prefer to keep it from my children in either situation as much as is feasible. However, it is impossible to keep it 100% away from it and in this situation; violence with animals is a little different. They are killing to survive. Sentana is right in that it is foolish because you cannot completely shelter children from this completely. Better to be there to explain things than the see it, read it or hear about it from other sources.

I try to monitor the amount and type of violence within reason. Also, letting them see certain doses as they get older so they develop a certain amount of understanding. So I guess it depends on the child and what they can handle and understand.

Mo had some pretty violent tendencies when he first moved in with us - tendencies that are slowly working their way out of his system.

I think I owe a lot of this to Thomas the Train stories - the meanest little engines imaginable. Thomas introduced the concept of the bully into our conversation.

Recognizing bullies has gone a long way to getting rid of the bully in Mo.

He won't be watching "The Fight Club" or "Pulp Fiction" anytime soon but I'm not alarmed by the violence in movies directed at children anymore.

We did a LOT of Discovery Channel watching when the kids were younger. Boy Cub especially liked the dino specials. We marked the calendar and counted down the days for the series you purchased.

We also did a lot of talking during the "nature" parts of the shows, wheher it was the lions making more lions, or chasing down dinner. Girl Cub didn't deal with the dinner part as well. Didn't bother boy at all. He thought it was cool that they could do that and not have to cook it. Girl nearly cried, but she tends to be pretty sensative to animals. She would come running to me in tears if one of the neighborhood boys messed up an ant hill just to be mean or would ask me to "watch out" if I was about to step on a little creature. (she still does that last part at 16)

I think you have to judge for yourself how sensative sozlet is to the pain of others, the suffering of animals, and go from there. If you choose to let her see it, you might let her know ahead of time thatsome of the dino's ate leaves and grass, just like horses and cows do today. But some of the dino's ate other dino's, like tigers and lions eat other animals today.

Good thread title...

I didn't really have TV growing up -- just a little portable B&W that got one channel fuzzily and was so much work to watch that it was better just to go outside.

Still, I was fascinated with violence as a kid, much to my hippie parents' dismay. Dunno where it came from -- whether it was innate or came from other kids.

For what that's worth...

patiodog - my neighbor and I were always amazed that when our boys played together everything became a gun - depite the fact that neither of us have guns and we don't let them watch that kind of violent image.

Mo and I play with his US map puzzle and he always wants Kentucky and Oklahoma to be guns.

Go figure.

Now that I think of it, it started after I started school. Before that, my prized toy (not a toy at all, but the real deal) was my "gweasy watchet" -- an old, pungent half-inch socket wrench. That and the hammer I took to the fish tank.

Guns came later. Always some sort of tool, though.

Heh about the maps. Many parents of boys I know have told me that. (Not maps specifically, but even if there are no toy guns allowed in the household, they find something...)

Sozlet is generally quite sanguine (so to speak) about animals getting eaten -- again, as I noted in the first post, I don't have any problem with lions eating gazelles or whatever. Sometimes if it's particularly graphic I wince and ask her if she's OK; she waves me off and says "of COURSE."

I think I put my finger on what bothered me about "Walking with Dinosaurs" -- it's meant to look like a documentary, but it's not. Every miniscule piece of action has been extensively choreographed. There is an esthetic element to the bloodletting (and shewolf, it was WAY bloody), a certain "isn't this coooool?!" in a 15-year-old boy manner, or a Quentin Tarantino manner. They're appreciating their handiwork a tad too much -- "wow, check out how we got that slab of raw bloody meat to quiver!!!"

That plus the fact that when I winced and asked her if she was OK this time, she looked at me wide-eyed and unspeaking and didn't object when I covered her eyes or fast-forwarded.

Really interesting observations, Noddy, I'll think about that more. I haven't figured out yet if the WWD violence was from the plot or unnecessary -- I think what I was getting at above is that it barely shades into unnecessary, "oooh, blood!" territory.

Well, THAT is interesting.

I don't recall the predation in Walking With Dinos as being different. My my!

I was gonna say be guided by her, and you are being.

I cannot see why anyone would make a distinction between a fifteen year old boy and Quentin Tarantino--unless one feared offending the 15-year-old. Even though i spent three years in the Army Medical Corps, as a result of which i was more than once literally covered in blood, i have grown very squeamish about blood and cruelty. It's not that i can't take it, but rather that i won't. My level of empathy approaches shared pain.

Given that there were portions of the video which even the Sozlet found extreme, and that you took steps to help her deal with it, i'd say you have nothing to worry about. The problem which people have noted in recent years is that the violence of media is such that children no longer understand it as real, unless they are themselves the victims. Intelligent parenting can easily overcome this. I doubt you have anything to worry about Miss Cover Your Eyes--she'll understand the entire concept long before you stop worrying.

I am NOT kidding when I say I still can't watch Bambi again. The hunters, the forest, Bambi's mother. As I said, I'm not kidding.

Bambi affected me strongly, and I was eight. We had an eight mm. roll of it, I think. Eight is old enough to see these things, but it was some kind of news to me, and really hit me.

I think that makes it a different story. You shielded her from emotional distress, and she wanted to be shielded. That seems perfectly sensible to me. Or in other words, I agree with dlowan.

One of the features of mass entertainment that annoys me most is pandering to (and thereby making respectable) kids' normal infatuations with bodily fluids.

"Gross" should be an underground delight. Gross does not belong on the silver screen or in the middle of the living room.

boomerang - I agree with that gun thing and boys. My best friend has two little boys and she is so against anything violent. She was amazed how her oldest would make any toy into a gun. My girls at similar ages never did that. She just shugs her sholders and has come to the realization that sometimes it is true - boys will be boys.

Seems like you already figured out the problem with the dino movie and did the right thing. In general, I do think there's a difference between violence in nature (which I don't shield my kids from as I don't think it's in their best interest) and gratuitous violence done for its own sake. That kind of violence is the one deal breaker for me when deciding what the kids can watch. I might let them watch a movie with swearing (those are grown-up words) and mild lovey-dovey scenes are generally nothing to change the channel about, but shoot-em-ups and beatings and that sort of thing are off limits.