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With studios running $50 million advertising campaigns to get you to see their movies, parents need all the help they can get in making wise entertainment choices for their children. Movie Mom Nell Minow can help. On her Web site (moviemom.com), on dozens of radio stations, and in her book, The Movie Mom's Guide to Family Movies (Avon), Minow lets parents know what's objectionable in the latest movies and what values are lifted up.

On how movies affect kids: I've interviewed many people in their twenties. Universally they said, "I wish my parents had done a better job of protecting me." Every one of them felt that they had been harmed. One said that he felt "someone took something from me that I can't get back." People need to remember it's not called "show art" or "show morality"; it's called "show business." Studios are in the business of getting as much money out of you and your kids as they can, and they will try to do that by sending messages and images that you don't want your children to see.

On what parents can do: At a workshop, a mother said that her child had seen an inappropriate movie on a bus on the way to a soccer game. The coach put it in, and she said there was nothing she could do. I said, "Okay, if you remember one thing from me today, it's that you can do something about it. You are the parents." My child's school showed a movie that I thought was inappropriate for my fourth grader. So I called up the principal and said, "Are you nuts? You know it's a PG-13 movie," and she said, "Well, the kids voted to have it for a school party." So I said, "Oh great, let's have them vote on whether to have homework." Now the principal calls me if she has a question about a movie they are showing. You are the parent. You can do that.

On setting guidelines for movies: You have to know two things: You have to know your child and you have to know what's in the movie. I can help with that second category, but only you can make the decision about what's right for your child.

On using the ratings system: PG-13 is a no man's land on the ratings system. You have very mild stuff in there, and then you have unbelievably raunchy material—stuff they should rate R or even NC-17. When parents see a PG-13, an alarm bell should go off. Do not say to your kids, "PG-13 means you can't see it until you're 13." Because all of a sudden, they will be 13 and you'll want them to stay away from a particular movie. Make it absolutely clear, from a very young age, that you'll look at each movie on its own merit.

On peer pressure: You have to teach children that the "everybody else does it" argument doesn't work. Something that I did was to set up an e-mail list for the parents of my children's classmates. So when we do get "everybody else" arguments, we e-mail everyone on the list and say, "A child has told his parents that everybody in the ninth grade gets to go to R-rated movies. Is this true?" All the parents write back, saying, "Are you crazy? No!"

On movies at other kids' houses: Before a child goes over to someone's house, you need to set the ground rules with the parents. I find it better just to say, "My child is not allowed to watch movies or television at someone else's house. I hope that's not a problem for you." I get it out of the way. Because I guarantee you, there are people who have the same books as you, drive the same kind of car, whose kids go to the same schools, and who you would trust with your life. But they will show your children something that you would forbid. People have wildly different values about this kind of stuff, so you cannot trust anybody, and you cannot trust any situation.

On teens and movies: Because teenagers are so difficult, parents tend to pull back, thinking that's what the kids want. I've learned that they really don't want that. They want you to stop yapping at them and pay attention to them—listening to them, guiding them. Teenagers are the ultimate paradox. They like to break the rules. If you don't give them rules, they're going to break some that you really don't want them to break. It's wonderful for a teenager to be able to say to a peer, "I'd love to do it, but my parents would murder me." You have to say to your children, "No matter what it is, you can always blame me."

On the importance of rules—even when they're broken: If your child sees an inappropriate movie, it's a completely different situation if you didn't authorize it. I got a call from a mother who had driven her 14-year-old son to an "approved" movie, bought his ticket, and told him she would pick him up afterward. But he went into a different movie, and it was one of the most sexually violent movies ever released by a major studio. The kid came out very upset. He confessed to his mother what he had done. She asked me, "Is he warped for life?" I said, "He knew he was doing something he wasn't supposed to do. In a way the experience inoculates him from the real horror of the movie. It's when he feels that you don't care enough about him to try to protect him from this material that he really gets damaged."

On using movies to teach: Every movie is a morality tale of some kind. Movies are often about people who are trying to solve problems. Sometimes they're successful, and sometimes they're not. That's a great thing to point out to kids. In a movie like Stalag 17, based on a true story about a prison camp in World War II, you have some soldiers who are coping with the horrible situation with humor, by coming up with escape plans that are far fetched, or by scrounging to make life a little more comfortable. You can ask your child, "What do you think about these different ways of adapting? Which one would you choose?"

On being a role model: You don't want to turn every movie into a seminar. First, make yourself available for questions and discussions. Second, model the behavior of looking critically at what you see and talking about it afterward. So while you're watching a movie at home, for instance, you can say, "Wow, that's what I call perseverance" or "I was in a situation like that once and I made another decision, and it came out this way." There are great movies out there with wonderful stories that help enlighten and enrich families and help bring them closer together.

A Today's Christian original article.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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