Ratings be Damned

Times are a-changin'. My husband and I were never purists, but my first born didn't know what a commercial was until he was at least three. I let him watch the fancy television in my classroom one Saturday morning while I caught up on paperwork when he announced, "Mom, the TV is broken. Magic School Bus just stopped in the middle and now there's this," and pointed up to an ad for Frosted Flakes, something else I had never considered bringing into my home. I didn't think we'd ever get cable television, let alone watch anything besides PBS. I couldn't stand the advertisements that preyed on over-sized consumer appetites; plus, the perpetuation of stereo-types irked me and the blatant exploitation of chimpanzees.

I'm still trying fruitlessly to protect. Fast forward ten years to a conversation with friends today, my eldest claimed that I still don't let him watch R rated movies, and it occurs to me that this rule is outdated in an R-rated world. When Glee shows high school kids wasted and vomiting (How can they sing and dance so damn well when they're so damn drunk?) at 8 o'clock, perhaps I shouldn't be so picky about movies that throw around the F-word too many times (Hello, Billy Elliot.)

We watch a lot more television and movies these days. We set limits on what our second son can watch--he's only nine--but it's so much harder to keep him from sheltered than it was our first time around. On a recent spelling assignment his sentence was, "The Office is my favorite television show." "Honey, it can't be your favorite show if you're not even allowed to watch it." But as it turns out, he's caught enough clips between his brother and me to know that we think it's funny, so he thinks it's funny, too. The kid's been exposed to much more than I would have ever shown my first. When he's mouthing the words along with songs on an iPod he claims, "Don't worry mom, it's the clean version," but isn't it just as bad that he knows that the explicit version exists?

I don't confine my kids to channel 26 anymore, but I still don't love commercials. I do, however, love 30 Rock and the Office. As for my little boys, I'll try to redirect them until I think they're ready for more adult content. My teenager, though, is another story. Whatever the rating, his response is up to him. And I've got some rated R movies I want him to watch.