My friend Jeanine is a very creative and cool mom. She plans outings and adventures that put me to shame (or if not shame, then some sort of unintended mommy guilt), so I was surprised when she invited our gang of mom friends to take our 3 year olds to a matinee of Tales of Desperaux.
My first instinct was that if Jeanine and Pepper were going, it must be good. But then another mom friend, Jennifer, said she heard that it was too scary and bailed out last weekend. Then again, another Jennifer I knew already took her daughter (barely 4). So, which Jennifer is a mom like me supposed to believe?!
My husband told me about Common Sense Media for trying to make these kind of decisions. Its perfect when trying to figure out whether Nemo is too scary (yes, it is for us), Desperaux too tragic (yes, it is for us), or Dora too sophisticated (no, but it drives me bonkers so we opt out) for your three year old.
Do a quick search on any TV show or movie that you’re thinking of plopping your kid in front of and find out the quick and dirty details without having to preview everything first. I mean, are you really going to go to all these movies yourself first?!! Go on, test it out and let me know what you think.
What shows does your kid love right now? Anything that you thought was fine but totally just failed the commonsensemedia.org challenge?
Related post: Find out what we’re watching at 5:30 on weekdays with my confessional TV round-up of shows for my two boys. I’ll give you a hint: Milo is not yet two and he knows all the characters names on several shows.
I *love* the Common Sense media website. It’s not perfect, but it’s steered us in the right direction so many times. We like to have an occasional “family movie night” and finding something we all can enjoy can be a bit of a challenge. We usually check the website and select something before we go to the video store so we can be in and out. My son seems to be a bit braver than other kids his age, so we can usually tack on a year or so to the age suggestions, but for the most part, they’re spot on.
Thanks for this link! This will be very useful!!
Thanks for the link. We don’t watch much telly and when we do I’m always at a loss to know what’s suitable to watch. This is a good start especially for parents from other countries unfamiliar with local TV. We had a failed movie trip a few months back if we’d seen this it might have helped.
[...] Need help finding decent age-appropriate movies, try using common sense and this website. [...]
Seriously, the main problem with Common Sense Media is that they assume that all children mature at the same rate, (hint. they don’t), they believe that they can classify a movie/book/music/tv show to a certain age but that doesn’t mean that should be taken seriously. Although the base idea of the group, to give parents warning and knowledge of whats in the story is fine, they completely step over the line with their zealotry. Also, ditch it after your children become teens, way out of Common Sense Media’s range. Just to establish this, I don’t disagree with the base idea, just the execution of it.