While I would love to introduce my favorite geeky movies to my daughter, I think 2 1/2 is a little young for classics like Star Wars.
I have a friend from college who I am FB and Twitter friends with. He has a little boy who is about 6 months older than my daughter is. He was posting that he has started to show Star Wars and Star Trek: The Next Generation to his son.
This sparked a discussion between my husband and me about our daughter. We both agreed that those kinds of movies and shows would not really interest her at this time. They also may possibly scare her (because Darth Vader is kind of scary, especially if you are just a toddler). We will probably wait at least a year to see if she wants to give these movies at a try.
As a geek, I can’t wait for her to be old enough to watch some of my favorites. But I do want to make sure she isn’t scared and turned off by these shows. She already has a fear of zombies, thanks to bringing her to the Dragon*Con parade when she was 11 months old. I don’t want to make it worse.
At what age did you start showing your kids your geeky favorites of movies and TV shows?
Some of my 2.5 year old’s favorite movies are Star Wars (only the original three LOL). He loves them, and doesn’t find them scary. He also loves turning things into light sabers and recreating the sword fights. He also loves Doctor Who, there are only a limited few episodes that I won’t let him watch because they are too scary.
Hey, I don’t have kids, but my parents let me watch Terminator movies when I was about 6. And I think I started watching Star Wars around the same age. I know I definitely started watching Star Trek: TNG when it first started (can’t remember when exactly, but I was under the age of 10, I think).
Granted my family’s not normal, lol.
This probably isn’t helping much… sorry! 🙁
I have a 5 yr old and a 3 yr old daughters and they love watching the Star Wars movies. They started watching the movies at 4 and 2 and my oldest had a Star Wars Princess Party for her 5th birthday. I have also showed them Labyrinth and Princess Bride. I started with Princess Bride and they love them. The nice things about the Star Wars movies is there is no blood when they get shot kind like disney movies.
I think my oldest son was around 3 when he was introduced to Star Wars for the first time thanks to the marketing of Episode III in 2005 — he’s pretty good about scary scenes not being real. But I’d argue that most kids that age simply won’t have the attention span for such Geeky movies until they have the ability to process the dialogue and plot lines better. My youngest son didn’t do so well w/ the Star Wars movies until at least his 5th birthday or so. In Star Wars, it’s a little more complex than my kids’ other favorites: Pixar and Dreamworks animated films!
My oldest son is definitely on his way to being more of a Star Wars geek than me! Despite my best efforts, though, he’s just as interested in Episodes I, II, and III and the Clone Wars as he is the original trilogy. His 6th birthday cake was the Battle of Geonesis, in fact! https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/xtmd22zCj9oQtPR4zFpaHA?feat=directlink
Hey now, The Clone Wars is great, this past season in particular (season 3). I’m a big fan of backstories/origins stories, and Clone Wars is far and away better than the Prequels in this respect. I love the cameos and character intros as well (Tarkin and Chewbacca recently).
Tee hee! I did enjoy The Clone Wars (movie and TV series), but it’s kind of a joke in our house that our kids aren’t “Pure” Star Wars fans…like my husband and me.
No matter which kind of Star Wars fans they are, we’re definitely glad they didn’t turn their noses up at it when we introduced it!
My son was 5 when we let him watch his first Star Wars movie. He was already familiar with the character well before then. His 1st birthday party was actually Star Wars themed.
I think my daughter was between 3 and 4 when we first put in Star Wars for her. When R2D2 is zapped by the jawa and falls over, she burst into tears. She was upset even when I jumped forward to show her that he would be okay. So we decided to wait another year or so before watching anymore, and by then (maybe 5 years old?) she loved it, and all the others.
My son is only two months old, but I can relate to your conundrum. I remember when my little brother was probably four he had gotten into a dinosaur kick and watched the first and third Jurassic Park movies constantly. I think it depends on each child. Some are braver than others 🙂
I don’t really see the point of introducing them (4-year-old girl, 2-year-old boy) to these things so early. It’s a little tough sitting on my hands and waiting, but there is so much to enjoy at each stage, I’m not going to push it (but then my 4-year-old isn’t even interested in watching 90 minute Princess Movies–a 45 minute double Dora episode is about her length–and she has a super attention span–just not for the screen.)
I feel very strongly about the tv and how to introduce it to my son (23 months)
He gets 2 episodes of Pepa Pig a day and one movie a week.
I’ve been introducing him to cartoonmovies. He never sits through a whole one yet except for Madegascar. I am really concerned with action and violence.
In fact, I find Miss Piggy too violent and skipped her scenes when we watched the Muppet movie.
I will not let him watch Star Wars for a while. I’m not sure when.
My friend, who is a huge Star Wars fan, held back till her son was 10 years old. She was dressing him as Jawas and Ewoks and he never knew what they were. Too funny. She let him have picture books though.
I have a daughter who’ll be 3 this month. She likes Star Wars. She doesn’t watch it all the time though. You know what geeky movie she loves? The Dark Crystal. it’s on Netflix and was watching it while she played. She started watching it and asking about it. We talked about pretend and now she loves it.
Cant believe what im reading. Theres a reason that thise movies have age recomendations. It’s not likely but it can harm your childs emotional growth. Showing that kind of movies is not thinking about your childs benefit, only your own egos. There was a great post about a year back on geekdad about when to show stat wars to your kids. Patience parents, and the force will be with you
I remember that Geekdad article and it was one man’s opinion about what was his decision for his children and was not meant as geeklaw. I think, as parents we know our children and it is up to us to know what the right time is for them as individuals.
I did watch TNG with my oldest son when he was two, but I knew the adult themes would be way over his head at that point, and there was nothing frightening in the episodes we watched. Once he got a bit older, however, I put them on hold for a few years.
I honestly don’t remember when we introduced Star Wars. Of course, the younger son saw them at a younger age than the older. 🙂 They still haven’t seen Episode III. It’s too much for ME, psychologically…
I have had TNG on when my toddler was in the room, but usually she didn’t find it interesting enough to sit and watch it.
Forget movies and TV. Why in the world did you have your 11-month-old in the Dragoncon parade?? How did you think that would turn out? I mean what 11-month-old doesn’t want to be surround by thousands of freakishly dressed screaming geeks, in the autumn heat, while taking a nearly 2-mile trek down the streets of Atlanta?
She wasn’t in the parade, we just watched the parade. And honestly because the parade is in the morning, it wasn’t that hot out.
She enjoyed it until the scary float game by. She loves costumes and liked seeing all the costumes.
Seeing geeky tv and movies at our house is unavoidable as my husband works from home and watches stuff on his third monitor all day. We don’t do horror movies (or Star Wars) so really, most of it is pretty tame (Star Trek, Stargate, MacGyver, ect). Our two year old ignores it most of the time, but my heart just about burst with pride when she pointed to the screen one day and said “Data!”.
Too funny, we JUST introduced my almost-3-year-old to Star Wars two days ago. He got a light sabre toy from McDonald’s and hasn’t put it down since, so I asked him if he wanted to see a light sabre movie. I think it brought a tear to my husband’s eye when the little guy asked to watch Star Wars. He can be a bit more easily frightened than some kids, so I skipped some of the scary scenes, he was more interested in who was a “good guy” and who was a “bad guy.” It took me a while to convince him that Chewbacca is a good guy. I gotta say, though, I was worried he wouldn’t pay much attention to it, but he actually recognized characters that we have action figures/plushes of and seemed to enjoy it more than I thougt he would. It’s definitely something that I would watch with him to try to control the level of violence and scary aliens he’s exposed to, and it’s certainly everyone’s right to choose what to show their own children. I remember being absolutely terrified of an anime panda cartoon when I was about 4, but LOVING Watership Down and The Last Unicorn which are both relatively violent and not altogether child-friendly cartoons. I think a mom knows what her child can handle.
My daughter turned 5 yesterday and all day long she begged us to watch ” the first Star Wars, you know the original”. She has watched all of the movies except the third of the new series. She started watching them at Christmas and I think it was a good time to introduce them to my sensitive daughter. My younger daughter doesn’t like them at 2 1/2. She isn’t afraid, she just doesn’t understand the themes or the plot. I can’t wait to really watch them all as a family but I think we have 2- 3 more years before I show them to my 13 month old son.