This has been bugging me a lot lately and I guess I am writing this post more as a way to vent than anything else. Okay so get to the point! The story goes like this:

I work in a theatre (a real life theatre with actors on a stage not a movie theatre). Currently we have a production running which is determined by the producers to be “child and family friendly”. It is a family show, I’ve seen it twenty three times already and it is suitable for children, let me correct that – some children. The show carries a recommendation that it is suitable for children over the age of six as it contains scenes which may frighten young children. It also runs at nearly two and a half hours with only one twenty minute interval. I have trouble sitting still for that long and children seem to have even more difficulty. What has been bugging me about all of this is the amount of people who have been bringing very young children, I’m talking two to five year olds, and then proceed to:

• complain about how unsuitable the show is for their children
  
• they complain that their child can’t sit still for the whole show so they end up missing the majority of it by constantly taking their child in and out of the theatre
• disrupt the rest of the theatre by allowing their child to carry on, dance around, talk and sing while the show is on then use the excuse of “they are just children” to cover the bad behaviour
• get verbally abusive to other people in the theatre or the staff who politely ask them to control their children

The main thing that is bugging me about all of this is that these people (and they are not always parents but well meaning aunts, uncles, grandparents or family friends) have paid no regard at all to the recommendation of the show. The recommendation is there for a reason. Which brings me to my next annoyance:

A friend recently posted on Facebook asking people for their opinion on whether the Avengers movie would be suitable for his five year son to attend with the side note that “he saw Captain America last year”.

My immediate reaction was “WTF!!!”. Why would anyone take a five year old to see a M rated movie. I’ve seen the Avengers. It has a huge amount of violence in it (You see people beat the absolute crap out of each other, in one scene a guy dies on screen, and then there is the terrifying aliens that are seen destroying the city). I’m not sure about you but I would be taking my five year old to go see the Muppets or Sesame Street. Just because you stupidly took your four year old to go see a movie last year that was, again, completely unsuitable for him, why would you want to make the same mistake again by taking them to another unsuitable movie?

I don’t get it. Ratings are there for a reason. Why would any parent want to subject their child to material which is unsuitable for them? It does nothing for the well being of the child, if anything you are going to do damage to your child. The child that has been taken to the theatre before they are old enough is going to relate their experience with boredom and getting yelled at by an increasingly less patient parent, rather than remembering the experience as the magical entertainment it should be. The child which is subjected to graphic violence in a movie as a child is not going to understand the context of that violence but rather remember that violence equates to entertainment.

But of course my opinion counts for nothing. Why?

“You don’t have children. You wouldn’t understand.”

I can’t wait for the day that I have children and get endowed with all the earthly knowledge of child raising which comes with it. I’m guessing a magical parenting fairy descends upon me as I give birth and my brain is suddenly filled with all the knowledge of the universe on children and child raising. I guess I will just have to wait and find out.

Image by teruhn (flickr)