We had an experience in our home yesterday that gave me pause for reflection. Our three-year-old son just got done watching a video for an hour because my wife needed a nap. Afterwards, my wife informed me that he didn’t like what he was watching, but he watched it anyways. Why? From our observations, children will watch almost anything.
So what does this have to do with Netflix Reviews for Children’s Films? Lets take a couple of “kid’s” films from Netflix:
A positive review: “My son is 22 months old and has been watching this for the past few months. He loves this show and watches it from start to finish.”
A negative review for a different film: “This movie was so ———*! But my 4 year old liked it, I guess that’s all that matters.”
*We don’t use this word in our house, so I won’t use it in my blog posts either.
So what do I think? My own children, especially when they were younger, could be just as captivated by a well made documentary or foreign film as any of the “kiddy/preschool” product that is being marketed to that age group. This was in part because their dad was in film school and would bring home movies to watch. The claims that younger children will sit down and watch a movie all the way through says very little for whether or not we should let our children watch it.
I won’t really push the point much beyond this. As we work to be more discerning in the type of movies that we let our children watch, the argument that a child will sit through the whole movie, doesn’t seem to really mean much. When we’re dealing with the age group of 18 months to about 6 years old, the pre-school years, there is a great deal of positive entertainment that will engage them. Let’s give them the very best, and always in moderation.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.