Let me start by saying upfront, “I know she means well and has the best of intentions.” I’m also going to say upfront, “my mother does so many wonderful things for my kids that this is a fairly trivial topic.” That being said, it still drives me nuts so I’ve got to air it out and ask for help.
For background, I have a five year old. His mother and I agree pretty consistently on what is and isn’t appropriate for his TV and movie viewing options. The challenge we have is his grandmother, my mother. My mother periodically buys random animated popular movies on DVD that she thinks the boy will enjoy.
A couple of months ago, she stumbled on Ice Age 2. For those of you not familiar with it, the heroes, an animated mammoth, a sabre-tooth tiger, and a giant sloth lead the members of their prehistoric community out of their home land because the giant ice flow that they all live next to is about to burst and flood their happy valley dooming them all.
One of the unseen dangers is that in that sea of doom are water bound dinosaurs/predators that would love nothing more than to eat all of the happy valley residents when the ice walls come tumbling down.
Now lately my son has been really sensitive to predator/prey issues as he’s trying to wrap his pre-school brain around concepts of life and death. Well, my mother bought this movie and showed it to him with out asking us first when she sat for him one afternoon. It all seemed to be fine, until the wee hours of the morning when the boy wakes up howling and having nightmares about “giant dino-sharks.” I mentioned this to my mother the next day and she tried to laugh it off. We exchanged words and I made it perfectly clear that the next time he woke up screaming in the night about “dino-sharks” we’d be sure to call and she could help console him and tell him it was all “just make believe.”
Heaven as my witness, I did it too. 3 am the next night while my wife consoled our boy, I called Grandma and put her on speaker phone. I told her, “here, listen to your grandson and tell me again that watching that movie was no big deal. Next time you want to buy him a DVD, fine. But you’d better let me screen it first. “
So far, she’s been good at her word. I’ve been getting caught up on my animated movies and there’ve been a few that we’ve put to the back of the library for him to watch when he’s older. But so far Grandma’s been honoring the deal.
So I’m curious, would anyone else have handled it differently?
