Friday, October 10, 2008

Bad Mom?

So during the last scary movie of our month-long horror-movie-for-Halloween schedule, I started to feel really weird about Sam being there while we watched the movie. See, he's getting so much more alert and attentive every day, he even sometimes rolls over to his side to look at the TV. He's not that into TV, but he does sometimes like to look at the lights and colors -- or at least that was my take on it, since he always seems to like to look at light and shadow on the walls and stuff like that. I found this helpful for getting him into tummy time and heck, I like to watch movies too. But with my increasingly aware baby passively taking in Nightmare on Elm Street, I started to feel pretty weird. So I sat on the floor playing with him for a lot of it, and holding him in my arms as he slept for the rest.

I mean, if he's soaking in all the stuff around him all the time -- what will happen if he spends a month soaking in scary movies every night?? What part of scary movies is innate and what part is learned? Are the creepy music, sounds, and screams naturally something we sense as bad, scary, or horrific? Will this make him scared? And even if it is a learned thing, if he grows up NOT feeling fear with those things, what will that do to him?

I don't know. As always I'm probably getting overly worried and paranoid about it, but it seems like maybe the safest thing is to avoid having baby in the room when watching scary movies. And eliminating playtime TV watching. He won't miss it, I'm sure.

Is this the end of scary movie night??

http://www.askbaby.com/the-influence-of-tv-on-young-babues.htm

1 comment:

Stephanie said...

I grew up watching them nonstop, and considering my parents took me to the theater to "see" Amityville Horror when I was a teeeny baby, I'm assuming there was more of the same going on at home. And I turned out ok, I think. he he he