by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: March 11, 2010

Nothing is more irritating and telling about the quality of parenting than to see children in theatres where the film is inappropriate for their age or stage of development. This indicates a stubborn lack of attention to the quality of life as well as the needs of the children.

It is not just the apparent age or the actual age, but the stage of the child's emotional and intellectual development, which does not line up with the number of years that the child has been alive. Some children are more developed than others, and the difference can mean years of difference between actual age and actual maturity.

At any immature age, the excessively violent, sadistic and horrific movie can truly warp a child's comprehension of the world, of gender roles, and of appropriate behavior. Combine that with high sound levels and increasingly accurate and graphic representations of the worst that can human beings can think of to do to themselves or others, and any child is inclined to develop some problems with what they see and hear.

In terms of graphic sexual content, frankly, children have always managed to see and to hear a lot, so the major problem is with inappropriate sexual content, such as deviant sex, violence related with sex, and inappropriate gender stereotypes and behavior that is the last thing that a child needs. This is magnified when they come from a household where something as obvious as controlling access to inappropriate films is something that the parents do not appear to comprehend or be able to handle well, so there are probably other inappropriate behaviors and activities that are just as difficult for such parents to manage.

The language

Combine increasing real life exposure and experience for the older, but still underaged children who are entering the larger world of substance abuse and the consequences of personality disorders that they have developed. There are plenty of examples of real world   and increasingly horrific crimes, where children get  the ideas to recreate everything from hazardous stunts, to sadistic torture and murder scenarios that have been fueled by intoxication and pre existing mental illness.

Mature films also have a way of depicting life that is on the downsloping and sleazier side of the hill. These films are aimed at adults, to tell stories of terrible decisions and the consequences, or of war and of other themes that are for the fully formed mind to absorb. The fully formed mind has protections that children's minds simply do not have. Children will be more likely to see romance and glamour where there is actually a cautionary tale, because they cannot tell the difference.

The fully grown adult mind understands personal responsibility, consequences of our actions, and that there are other people and things in the world beside ourselves. Children do not have those capacities and can only see exaggerated life themes from their limited perspective. They will process difficult concepts through incomplete moral, ethical, and intellectual minds. The results are warped, incomplete and often twisted ideas about life, right and wrong, and good and bad.

The policy needs to be that such parents, and their children, are summarily rounded up and promptly thrown out of a theatre when the film is far in advance of the child's apparent age. If the individual is that much older than they look, then they can produce some identification to prove it.

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