Watching Movies with My Kids

I used to love going to the movies. In a past life, I studied film history, frequented film festivals, read reviews, kept abreast of the latest indie releases. But something happened… what was it now? … Oh yes, I had two kids and became totally consumed with parenthood. Nowadays my husband and I make it to a theater a couple of times a year. Our Netflix cue can go for weeks unattended.

But lately I’ve been thinking, what about watching movies with my kids? I mean, actually watching them—not just popping in an occasional video to buy myself an hour to cook dinner, but really making an effort to find great films that I would like too. To tell the truth, most contemporary kids’ films send me scurrying from the room to do housework. Yes, I would rather clean the toilet than watch most of the children’s movies out there today.

So, I am wondering, would an almost three-year-old and a six-year-old be willing to watch what I like—classics, foreign-language films, long-form documentaries, independent and art films?

I need to find out, because in our house, TV and movies have become a source of guilt and conflict for me. I had this unrealistic idea, early on in parenthood, that my kids would be "screen free"—no video or computer games, no TV and only limited and carefully selected movies. There are plenty of studies that document the harmful effects of excessive screen time on today's youth. And compared to most kids, mine probably do watch less.

But the thing is, they really, really want it. And they wear me down begging to watch movies, and because I have not stocked our video library (because I had no intention of allowing videos in the first place), I turn to the same hand-me-down videos they've been watching for years, movies that I didn't pick out, and that I personally don't want to watch again (and again).

It's all so uninspiring. So now I'm coming around to the idea that finding really great films for them to watch makes more sense than sheltering my kids from anything with a flickering image. I want my kids to have a trained and critical eye for viewing media, and I would love for them to have an appreciation for film as an art form.

I love movies, so why shouldn’t my kids?

So we’re going to start watching some movies together. I’m thinking of it as a Kids' Film 101 course for them and me. I’ll be hunting down foreign and lesser-known films, revisiting classics from my own childhood, and looking for modern-day classics as well. I’ll be posting here on our reviews and impressions. Hopefully we’ll find some great stuff. I kind of think we will.