Thread: Raising my kids on horror

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I was perusing a website on the old Chiller Theater TV show that I used to watch when I was a kid. I remember watching The Creature Double Feature and similar shows. Remember when horror movies would be Legosi's Dracula or Karloff's Frankenstein or King Kong or one of the hundreds of 50's Sci-Fi movies. They still helped you keep your innocence in tact. Kids today get bombarded from so many different directions today. I see parents letting their kids rent these mature themed video games and I hear about parents taking their kids to see movies that would have horrified me when I was younger. What's wrong with keeping your kids innocence in tact? I've been raising my kids on the classics. One Million Miles to Earth, Earth VS The Flying Saucers, King Kong (the original), Lost in Space, Land of the Giants. These things still appeal to kids and they don't warp their little minds. Its easy to get lost in the mindset of having your kid be your buddy and almost forget sometimes that your first job is to be a parent. To look at things from their young minds. To shelter them from the real world horrors (it will come in time). To let them believe in miracles and thing they can be anything when they grow up. Its bad enough my kids have to grow up in a world where they know what a Jihad is. I'm just not in any rush.

i think the classics would be just fine for kids, because they didn't focus on gory, disturbing things, they more tried to get you with the mysteriouness of the 'monster' like nosferatu, nothing about that movie is terribly frightning, but the fact that nosferatu is so mysterious in nature and has those creepy fingers and face, it makes it very chilling!

Well said, john! I especially liked the part about knowing what a jihad is, so sad that we see that word outside a history book!! I, too watched Creature Feature, and absolutely love all the old classics, and the 'B' sci-fi movies from the 50's and 60's. It was plenty scary to me to think about aliens snatching my brain while I slept (could THAT be the reason I am an insomniac????), or wondering if my next-door-neighbor with all the chest hair was a werewolf!! Those flicks are fabulous alternatives to the gory "torture porn" that passes for horror these days.

I still LOVE watching older horror films, much better for you than the modern stuff, they engage the imagination and encourage story-perception skills. I always encourage people to WATCH THOSE OLD MOVIES and put down that crap they make nowadays. If Hollywood had the GUTS to go back to more traditional storytelling, I would purchase, and endorse, their product a lot more!

oh don't get me started on parents that think they are friends instead of parents. I'm so sick of teens and young adults, with "cool" parents. Usually means the kids are a total mess and parents have no control. I digress....

As someone who saw The Exorcist when I was 8 or 9.......yeah, stick to the classics. My dad was pretty ticked my brother had let me watch that. I ran from the room screaming. hee hee hee hee. s'funny now.

How about Monster Squad? I haven't seen it in a looooooooooong time, but I remember it being pretty innocent.

I'm going to try to ease mine into it, for sure. Munsters, Halloween Specials, etc... no gore.
I want him to be a spook like me, but not warped. (like me)

I was reading Stephen King novels by the 5th grade.

I think different kids handle horror in different ways. I watched the Halloween specials and creature flicks and such. I didn't really watch super scary movies back then, but if I managed to see one I was pretty much ok. But I did have a lot of video games in my house. My Father was/is a video game nerd, my older brother, my younger sister and brother, and my husband (not to mention ME) are ALL video game fanatics. (Heck, I have a 23 arcade game collection in my house right now) I was playing DOOM and Duke Nukem.. Leisure Suit Larry when I was pretty young. And at the time at least DOOM was pretty freaky.

I think that some parents just aren't paying attention to what they are buying for their kids. Maybe it's that they don't normally watch those genres themselves so they aren't in tune anymore to what they have evolved into. I have watched parents give into an M rated game simply because their kids were screaming about it. It just happens. Plus, kids are going to watch what they want eventually. They will find a friend whose parents aren't home.. etc.. I feel, through experience, that as long as a child knows fantasy from reality, they will be able to handle it.

I do agree with preserving their innocence as long as you can. They only have it once.

Try to keep them innocent for as long as possible. I constantly tell my children not to grow up any sooner then they must.

As far as movies go how much control do we really have? Once our children walk out the door one can only hope that we have given them the confidence to make good decisions(noticed i said good not correct) Only recently did I discover that our youngest (11) has been watching horror movies at a freinds house for atleast a year. However, we have gone to great lengths to be sure they understand that tv, movies, videos games are in no way a reflection of reality.

Exactly.. love it. You need to be able to trust them. And if you are confident they understand reality from fantasy and how to make good decisions, this becomes easier to do. Trusting your children has a bigger effect on them that people sometimes think.