The Nerd Parent’s Guide: When and how to introduce your kids to Star Wars | Hacker News Reader

The Nerd Parent’s Guide: When and how to introduce your kids to Star Wars

hanselman.com

30 pointsshawndumas28 comments

Why not just let them discover it for themselves like they would any other movie?

It's a famous movie about spaceships , aliens and lasers; I had parents with no interest in Sci Fi and I still saw it by the time I was 9, as well as playing all the old school SW video games (XWing, Rebel Assault , Tie Fighter).

What always surprised me is that the star wars films have a "U" rating here in the UK (which means suitable for everyone) rather than at least a PG (meaning suitable for older children with parental discretion) considering the amount of violence.

You ask: Why not let them discover it for themselves?

In our social circles, many kids see Star Wars before age 5 and most have seen it by age 6. For many, that will be their first exposure to violence and evil. Depending on your values around violence (graphic or otherwise) and evil, you might want your kids to discuss and assimilate what they're seeing in a thoughtful manner.

Exactly. Star Wars was coming up at school literally every day. This was their first exposure to anything close to "evil" and certainly their longest exposure to guns/blasters. It's a War Movie, no question. Going from zero violence to two hours of violence without explanation is a lot for a little mind. I just chose to eek it out in bits and provide context.

The best part of this experiment/experience was that we ended up talking in aggregate for at least 3x longer than the length of the movie. A lot of good discussions came out of this that wouldn't have had we shown the movies all at once. Little people need time to absorb, consider, argue, dream and understand complex stuff.

It seems surprising that Star Wars was so many peoples first introduction to anything violent or "evil". I remember watching things like Ninja Turtles, He Man and even Loony Tunes cartoons which all contained violence and villains long before SW.

Funny that you mention Ninja Turtles as both boys watched the 90s live action version of TMNT and while there's a lot of ersatz kung fu neither of them thought of the bad guys as truly malevolent and weren't put off by the violence. I think it's the introduction of guns/blasters and swords that are demonstrated to do real damage where things get dodgey.

I think that fantasy violence is more tolerated by the censors. Generally that seems reasonable to me. Probably should be PG or above though.

A U rating in the UK means for over 4 year olds however. - http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/u/

While I appreciate the amount of thought and effort he's putting in here, I'm not entirely convinced that its needed based on my own experience and childhood.

The first movie I was ever exposed to in the theatres (note, I didn't say 'watched' since I was a whole 8 months old) was Return of the Jedi. During the remainder of the 80's as I grew up, I was well familiar with Star Wars. I had some of the action figures, and the original trilogy was frequently aired in our house. By the age of 5, I could almost recite the scripts.

Nothing was cut. Han shot first. Ponda Baba lost his arm in the Cantina. My father loved horror, scifi and fantasy and wanted to share it with me.

Parents today seem way too concerned with shielding their children from the world. I'm glad in the 80's that my parents didn't. By the time I was 6, I had my own pocket knife, soldering iron (lead solder too!), chemistry set, etc. My parents never censored/monitored my computer use (largely because they knew it wasn't possible). I was online in some capacity (BBS, Compuserv, etc) at a very young age. Never had any problems.

Disclaimer: I am not a parent. I hear things change when you are.

Agreed. I definitely watched star wars in its entirety including the entire cantina scene at least by the age of six. The dark parts were disturbing but I don't think they were a problem.

There's an important early lesson these helicopter parents are losing by not exposing kids to a little PG movie violence, that my parents explained to me well - its fantasy movie violence for entertainment and not real. God forbid one of these kids goes over to a friends house who has less supervision and they pop in a DVD of Hostel or something. With all the violence and gore in modern movies its probably a pretty good idea to prepare them for all the crap they're going to get exposed to later in life

Just a point, I did show them the Revisited fan edit in which, as the first poster alludes to, Han shoots first, etc. But also remember these are 4 and 6 year old kids. It's about balance. I'm not trying to "helicopter parent," on the contrary, I'm trying to provide context. We only skipped the burnt body and amputation. I think that's reasonable given what I know about my 4 year old.

Perhaps slightly OT, but I think its easy for us as adults to thing we'll 'know' what our children will find scary or disturbing. The two film scenes from me being 5-6 that I remember always scaring me were things that most adults wouldn't probably find that scary. They were Bruce Banner turning into the Incredible Hulk and the Jabberwocky scene from Alice in Wonderland.

Children are complex, and I think rarely can we assume to know what they'll think. Its why we laugh so much when they say funny things- we can't predict them.

Very true. In this case I assumed that burnt bodies of parental figures and traumatic amputations were too much for a 4 year old. It's possible he could have not sweated that at all and been freaked out by the Jawas. Parenting is a gentle balance and a series of judgement calls.

I don't really get this at all.

I saw Star Wars when it came out, at the cinema, and it was great. But that was 35 years ago. There have been a ton of films made since then and the original Star Wars is OK, but nothing great. It should just be one film among many that children get to see.

If I were a teen today then I'd likely think of the Harry Potter films as the defining films of my childhood and maybe when I grew up I'd be deciding on when to tell my children about Harry Potter and working out how to watch them etc. Or perhaps it would be some of the Pixar films.

I enjoyed Star Wars when I was a child; but today's children don't need to be introduced to it as if it were some sacred document.

FTA:

"Daddy, who is Dark Vader? Is he a bad guy? I heard he has a Light Saver."

Sure, I never said it was a defining film (although it's arguable so), only that my kids were super-interested in it and that they'd been pushing to watch it. My thoughts were to wait until they were older to see them as they are VERY intense compared to the Pixar movies they've already seen. Given that they REALLY wanted to see Star Wars I decided to show them in a controlled way, that's all.

Don't. Let your kid have his own childhood, they don't have to relive yours.

Just because the Star Wars films are old, doesn't mean they're not great entertainment. Why should they be forbidden from watching them if the kids are of a suitable age, and they want to watch them?

I never mentioned forbidding anything.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, I'm not a Star Wars person. It was a fine film when I saw it thirty years ago and I haven't thought of it since. My kids came to me after lots of other kids at their school had been talking about the mythology. They asked to see this movie just as they asked to see "Cars." I'm very interested in them having their own childhood, and they are doing just that.

Interesting, especially because it gives a pointer to the excellent idea of Machete Order: http://static.nomachetejuggling.com/machete_order.html

Our kid had us read to him every part of the Star Wars story multiple times before we just let him watch #4 a week ago. It accomplished the main objective laid out in this nice article: Timing it so they're able to "discuss and analyze the themes appropriately."

I too feel movie #1 is one to skip, but for a different, simpler reason: It's about political maneuvering, which is very difficult to explain to kids. My 7 year old son still doesn't fully get it after reading the book several times and me attempting to explain in several different ways why Palpatine's strategy was so effective (cause wars in order to steadily increase his power). He needs a foundation of more basic political concepts before he can get these subtleties. My wife even had trouble understanding the movie when she first saw it. Without understanding what the story is about, it has the feel of random mayhem.

Back to the main point: There's indeed a lot of violence and our family was one of the last holdouts among peers. We knew many kids who had seen Star Wars before the age of 5, and we also know a lot of kids who think of killing and violence as trivial everyday things. Like the author of this post, we didn't want our kid to be brought up like that so we went through he effort of reading and thoroughly discussing the books.

edit: minor cleanup

Alternatively, the rise of Palpatine is contrived.

This guy's kids are 4 and 6 and they don't use the computer OR play video games? Tough for me to take this seriously when Star Wars seems more developmentally important to him than essential technologies that will help his kids succeed.

I didn't use a computer until I was about 7, I know plenty of people who didn't use one until they were about 12. Doesn't seem to have affected our ability to use them too much.

Really? It's so hard to learn to use a computer that we need kids to start using them, and playing video games, before 6? That point and click is a tough concept to grasp. They better start early.

As you can tell, I couldn't disagree with you more. My kids are 4 and 2, and I have grudgingly allowed them to use my laptop, because they demanded it. I certainly didn't encourage them, and I will never allow them to play video games before they learn a little thing like reading books.

You and I share the belief that there are things that are valuable for kids to learn. I believe this is reading and independent thought, not pointing and clicking. If your grandma learned it at 50, why can't a kid wait till he's at least learned to sit still and focus on a non-moving page of print, which is the more difficult thing, I think.

Children's minds are built to soak in information. You could wait until a kid was 10 to introduce them to computers and they would still blow your mind with what they could figure out and do.

I highly doubt that holding off on video games and computers will be a detriment in the long run.

I'm counting on that.

This highly depends on the child itself, the parents, the circumstances/country/culture in which the child grows up in and to some degree, the sex of the child too. I was introduced to computers at the age of 5 and it has definitely helped me become the software developer I am today.

I'd say a huge reason why there aren't more women in technology is because girls aren't introduced to computers (and/or gaming) early enough, or as early as most boys are.

Research in cognitive development shows that brains are REALLY absorbing a lot at 4 and 6. These are YOUNG kids. A four was pooping his pants 18 months and learning to walk 3 years ago.

They'll have more than enough keyboard and screen time when they are 8 or 10 and I'm sure they'll catch up just fine.

I'm having them focus on social skills, becoming polylingual, talking to people, reading actual dead tree books, going to the library, making mud pies and running in fields.

I believe what I'm teaching them are essential technologies that will help them succeed.

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