Another try for the movies

The other day I was getting sick, although I didn't know it. "I know!" I said. (Very oddly for me.) "Let's watch a movie together as a family!" So we did. We decided that, at 3.5, our son might like Shrek, and so we put it on and fast-forwarded it over the part where he yells at the villagers. We tried earnestly to explain things to him, but he just looked blank, a bit afraid, and whenever Shrek did anything, he'd jump. I finally tapped my husband, said "Ok, that's it." and my son looked relieved. Then we tried to watch "The Parent Trap," but again, it was a no go. You see, our son doesn't watch TV. He watches maybe 1 hour a week of videos. (up from about 1.5 hours a month until he was 3.75) We TiVo everything so he doesn't get the commercials, and he's pretty sheltered. We TiVo "Reading Rainbow" for him, which is a lovely show. Nonetheless, some of the shows, like the one where kids talked about how sad they were about 9/11, are just too old for him, so he doesn't see them. A few weeks ago, TiVo accidentally taped about 5 minutes of a cartoon after whatever we'd taped. It was a cartoon in which the brother and sister hated one another. Although it was meant to be funny, they were doing nasty things to one another, and then the girl yelled "I HATE you" to the boy. I turned it off quickly, but Simon said to me "why did they SAY that?" I told him that they seemed to have some problems. Sigh. Incidents like this keep us from watching more. The other night he was very relieved to not have to watch Shrek or the other video. He got to watch his favorite Busytown video instead. Simon has always loved Richard Scarrey and I bought him some videos when he was very young. He didn't watch them until he was almost 3, and they're nice little videos. Nothing terrible happens, everyone works together, they all speak respectfully to one another, and they have real relationships. Gosh. So *boring!* Simon's favorite is the grouchy many who won't let kids play in his yard. One day the kids sneak onto his pond and go skating. "Mr Grouchy," as Simon calls him, runs after them and falls into the pond, so Lowly, the worm, pulls him out with the aid of a ladder. "Mr. Grouchy" is charmed, and decides that he likes the kids and will throw a party for them. Nice stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some large length of time before my son is comfortable watching people being really mean to one another, yelling at one another, and having bad things happen to them. Especially since he is not going to be allowed to watch movies that are too old for him. What I don't get is how all of these other 3 year olds watch this type of thing. Where do they all get this level of sophistication? It amazes me. And why would you do that? In my opinion, it's very important for boys especially, to be sheltered from violence and learn to love beauty. Simon loves to pick a flower and put it in a vase for "his" little table. He loves to smell perfumes and candles. A friend of mine loves to lecture me about how he'll soon be biting his toast into guns and so forth, but I don't really understand her lectures. Yeah? So what? Just because society will eventually buffet my child with violence doesn't mean that I'm going to just let it in the door early!