Just three days ago MIke was in an RTC where he was petitioning for the next phase that would allow him to listen to the radio. Three days later, having been home and seen more movies in the past three days than he did in the past 2 weeks, he is whining that he doesn’t get to do anything because in our house R movies are for kids 17 and older. He wants to watch the R movie? Why can’t he? There’s NOTHING to do here.
This is a kid who two nights ago, stood two feet in front of his room door and out of habit said to Bart, “Permission to Enter?”
Unbelievable how quickly perspective changes. We’re trying to transition him slowly, but he is already wanting more than we’re allowing.
OK, feeling the need to justify the R movie thing. Kyle came to us at 11 already having viewed tons of R movies. We let him watch some after that but with our approval. Later we found out he was watching them anyway, and lying to us about it by omission. He is a chameleon and the media has completely defined what he believes is OK and not OK. He is still addicted to movies and TV and often makes very poor choices in what to watch.
We decided to have a different standard for everyone else. If you can watch R at 11, where do they go from there? If society and the media industry are saying that something is inappropriate for kids under 17, then why would we, as Christians have a lower standard? Having rights of passage in our family with this kind of thing has made a lot of sense. If kids have to wait until they are 13 to watch PG 13 movies (and yes, we sometimes make exceptions), then there are a whole lot of movies that they can watch when they hit 13. Then at 17, they can incorporate Rs and have lots to watch before they are yearning for NC-17 or M or X.
I’m sure many people won’t get this, but for us it has worked.
And Mike, who hasn’t seen more than 5 movies in the last year and a half, and hasn’t seen an R rated movie in 8 years, now is complaining that he can’t watch an R. It’s this kind of stuff that makes me shake my head and sigh.
But the bottom line is that I feel like crap, and everything today is going to make me shake my head and sigh. I sure hope I can get some sleep.
1 comment:
Testing your limits already, hunh? Don't you hate that?! With my son, I have felt like his teenage years have been all about holding the line: Here's the line, son. This is it, right here. This is the line. Nope, it's over HERE. THIS IS THE LINE! And I'm a pretty lenient parent--I can only imagine how tough it must be to hold the line with more limits. I wish you were feeling better so it wouldn't feel so hard!
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