Sunday, July 04, 1999
Movies can be a tool in talking with kids
BY MARGARET A. MCGURK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Besieged with warnings about the toxic effect of bad movies, parents might be tempted to banish film from the family entertainment menu.
But why deprive your children of the joys to be found in a powerful art form, one that has captivated, entertained, educated and stimulated generations of American children?
Better to teach your children to be discriminating film fans, to think about what they're seeing, to appreciate quality. With a little forethought, you can use movies as tools to reinforce your values, to shape your children's tastes and to open up lines of communication about difficult, real-world subjects.
Try these tips:
• Start early. You can encourage kids to talk about every form of information — books, music and videos — as soon as they can talk.
Jean Rothenberg of East Walnut Hills has two daughters, seven married grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. A fervent movie lover, she spent a lifetime introducing children to the arts.
“I took them to theater and ballet, and that sort of thing,” starting when the children were about 6, she said. As for how she shared her love for film, “You take them to movies, you give them movies, you set their standards early. The more you give, the less need there is to take (away).”
Artist Mark Warren of Clifton said, “I got my kids started on music. I had one kid who wanted to go to sleep with "The Firebird' (Stravinsky's symphony) on. You gotta start early. One trip to the museum by public school is nothing. There has to be a kind of persistence.”
• Share the experience: You can't influence your children by remote control. You must watch movies with them, talk to them and listen to what they say.
Quentin Schultze, a professor of communication arts and sciences at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich., is the author of Winning Your Kids Back from the Media (InterVarsity Press, 1994; $49.99) and, with his wife, Barbara, The Best Family Videos (Augsburg Fortress, 1995; $5.99)
His advice: “Set aside time for viewing, defined as requiring discussion. So the viewing ritual is to decide together what to view, to view it, and to talk about it.
“What the parents say about the viewing will influence the kids more than what they view....With young children, they want to know what to think about it. They want a frame of reference....
“Not until about age 8 that they can fully distinguish between real-world and fictional image world. So parents need to provide perspective on these products for the younger children.”
• Use content to open doors: When his own children asked him about growing up in the '60s, Mr. Schultze rented American Graffiti for them, which inspired deep conversations, he said. “I suddenly realized films can be a way of generating a very serious discussion that children want to have with you. About all kinds of things — the Holocaust, abortion, racism — there is stuff out there that can facilitate tremendous discussions.”
Filmmaker Julia Reichert, who also teaches filmmaking at Wright State University, said she encouraged her now-adult daughter, Lela Reichert-Klein, to analyze movies from an early age.
“We talked about "Why do you think that guy did that? That was kind of a strange thing to do, wasn't it? At what part of the story were you surprised? Any part you thought didn't make sense? Wasn't it wonderful when that happened? What do you think that writer was thinking? Why do you think they did that?' ...Not just "Why did it happen?,' but "Why did the filmmaker put that in?' It's the idea that people actually did this, and there were choices involved.”
• Respect children's ideas: “By far and away the biggest skill parents need in all this is listening,” Mr. Schultze said. “It's less preaching at them than listening and helping them interpret their own feelings.
“Particularly with parents of teen-agers. People think their kids do not want to talk with them about popular culture, (but) the surveys on that are very clear — they do.
Mr. Warren, an avid movie buff, is also a former professor of art therapy. “I worked with over 500 adolescents from 12 to 18,” he said. “I found they have insight, intelligence, common sense that parents don't really know about. They're very smart, and parents don't always realize that.”
It's OK to show your feelings about a film to your children. “Lela still makes jokes that I cried at Uncle Buck,” Ms. Reichert said. “Some of the best movie conversations I've ever had have been with my daughter.”
• Arm yourself with information. Understand how movies are made and how they stimulate emotion. Sister Fran Tampiets, of the University of Dayton, author of Faith in the Media? (Ave Maria Press, 1997; $16.95), is an advocate of formal training in media mechanics. She persuaded the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to teach children how to pick apart movies and television and analyze the content themselves.
“Media literacy is not media bashing” she said. “It's developing the ability to access, analyze, interpret and evaluate information....It's helping students understand the craft of media production so they appreciate the good stuff and know when they're being fed crass commercialism.”
Other information sources include the Motion Picture Association of America ratings — though superficial, they signal when content is an issue — and movie reviews. The Internet is bursting with film information. Try the Internet Movie Database, us.imdb.com, which includescredits, ratings, links to official Web sites and sometimes readers' reviews. Highly detailed content information can be found at Screen It!, www.screenit.com. Its summaries give away the plot, but it also lists every instance of bad language, immoral behavior and adult content.
• Set your own agenda. You don't give your child unrestricted choice of what to eat, do you? Well, you can say “no” to an overdose of on-screen junk, too.
That also means you introduce them to movies you want them to see — favorites from your own childhood, musicals, Westerns or pre-Star Wars sci-fi — and new movies with more quality than publicity, like October Sky.
The same applies when the kids are old enough to face peer pressure. Said Mr. Schultze: “We tell our kids, "If you're going to see a flick at somebody else's house, give us a call. If you're uncomfortable or if we're uncomfortable (with the title), we'll put the kibosh on it. We can be the bad guys.'
“If it's right on the border, we say "OK and let's talk about it after.' You just delay discussion for later, so it's not just the peer group that is framing the interpretation, but the family.”
• Know your child. Nobody understands your children better than you do. You know what upsets them, what scares them, what amuses them, how they react to new ideas. Trust your feelings about what's right for them.
The same applies when it comes to knowing when your kids are old enough for a trip to the movie theater. Can they sit still for 90 minutes? Does their attention span cover that much time?
You can measure their progress — and prepare them for the theater — by showing a video at home under “movie” conditions: Lights off, no stopping the tape, no talking, everybody sits in a chosen seat for the duration. If they cannot tolerate those circumstances, they're not ready for the theater.
You can make the test run into a special event by picking a title that's different than their favorite videos. If they only watch cartoon videos, pick a live-action story, for example.
• Don't be afraid. Remember how much you loved going to the movies as a child, and share that enthusiasm. “Movies are America's great proletariat art form,” Mr. Warren said. “It's marvelous....It's a dynamic, terrific art form.”
Margaret A. McGurk is Enquirer film critic. Write her at 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202; fax 768-8330; e-mail mmcgurk@enquirer.com.
Teaching kids movie etiquette
