Anecdotally it's been my observation that the most sheltered kids often grow up to have the most problems - they "run wild" as soon as they move off to college or otherwise get that first taste of freedom.

You certainly don't want to give your children free reign to watch all the sex and violence they want (Will I sit down and watch a porn with my kids? Heck no!) but I think that discussing sex and violence with them is probably a lot more valuable than simply shielding them from it.

I watched Aliens when I was 12 or 13, along with a bunch of other dumb 1980s action movies. I didn't grow up to be violent, because my parents gave me a strong moral grounding and I understood the line between fantasy and reality - blowing things up and doing martial arts on people was okay in a movie, but not okay in real life. I understood that, so no movie was ever going to be able to change me.

Indeed.

I also watched Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers somewhen around 13 and those movies deeply touched me. Yes, I was pretty much crying and trying not to vomit on the D-Day scene, but it left me with deep impression about horrors of war, something that school never gives you. I didn't become more violent because of that - on the contrary, it reinforced my wish for peace and compassion for people living in places trapped in war.

Funny. All the fake violence I saw as a child on TV desensitized me to the real violence I now see in the news.

I'm not even disturbed by beheading videos or actual raw footage of violent murders (i.e. whatever's new on LiveLeak this month). I don't seek them out directly or find them entertaining. I just don't have any more visceral reactions than to a video of a guy getting kicked in the groin.

I think some part of what my parents taught me about TV got lodged in the wrong part of my brain: "What you see on TV isn't real, it's just make believe." I do have very strong (and natural) reactions when seeing violence or cruelty in person. I just barely react to seeing these things on tape (beyond the ick factor). Except for (real) violence against animals, that is.

It's actually pretty gruelling what's considered acceptable to show on the 8 o'clock news these days. But I'm not sure whether this is a cultural thing again -- I hear American news channels have a policy of never showing dead US soldiers.

For me it's exactly the opposite - while I'm pretty desensitized to the TV violence (but not completely, I still feel bad about unnecessary killing, like poor guards getting executed because they were just in the way), I'm still extremely sensitive if I know what I'm seeing is real. The cry/try-not-to-vomit/get-angry-afterwards kind of sensitive.

> Anecdotally it's been my observation that the most sheltered kids often grow up to have the most problems - they "run wild" as soon as they move off to college or otherwise get that first taste of freedom.

So, I agree that over-protecting your children is probably a bad thing.

That doesn't mean that reducing the amount of graphic violent or sexual content your children are exposed to is over-protective. I might be happy for a teen child to watch Aliens with me at home, and less happy for them to watch it with their friends with no adults around. I might be okay with full nudity but less happy with sex.

But, as soon as someone says they want to restrict the content available to their children people just leap to the assumption that that person wants some fucking weird over-protective most restrictive cocoon where the child doesn't get to experience anything but Wholesome Christian Content of good people singing their praise for The Lord.

Yea, I went to two public high schools and a private catholic high school in four years in the same county. Parents thought their kids were sheltered from drugs and whatnot at the catholic private school, but it was the exact opposite? It was almost like the kids at the private school thought they were missing out on something, and went buck wild?

Well, obviously it's about moderation. Too much exposure to sex, drugs and violence is bad, but no exposure is bad as well. Think of it as inoculation: if a child is sheltered completely, it doesn't know how to deal with these things when it is eventually exposed to them in the real world.

We agree.

i guess i wasn't clear in my post, but i'm talking about teenagers. they're still "children".

Ah, cool. That does make a difference.