So the last couple of Friday Movie nights my daughter (3) has loved and requested we watch Finding Dory like twice. She loved the idea of “looking for her parents,” etc. So today we borrowed Finding Nemo – considered the “O.G” of the finding series. I figured well it should have the same theme and concepts right? not by a long shot.
What made it even worse is I stood up at the beginning to grab something from the kitchen and while there I came back to the beginning scene – which if you have watched Finding Nemo you know can be much for little ones. Like huge shark a million teeth and the death of the mum. I for a moment thought I had put on Jaws the 1960s version. I immediately turned to the kids. Saw the creased brows on their faces and it was at this point I should have just changed it. I thought it would get better as we went along.
I dunno – thank God today my husband was watching with us which kind of helped my son as I saw at some points they were cuddling as I was covering my daughters face. I say all that to say, if you have to keep covering faces ans skipping scenes you might as well just turn it off and give the show a few more years and the kids can watch it then. We watched until the end – but overall there was just a sense of too much in your face type shark attacks, music that was just fear inducing for little ones, adrenaline inducing moments – like not your average – little heart skip palpitations – I am talking life or death.
I saw all that to say, right after the kids went to bed I hopped over to commonsensemedia.org and my suspicions were confirmed. Many parents said while overall they movie had a great theme, there were multiple scenes that were scary for little ones. Common sense is my go-to plug for reviews on kids shows, kid podcasts, all things digital media. Like there are trained individuals – early childhood experts who have no hand in Big Tech – who sit and review kids digital media and rate it on various things. Anyway based on parents reviews multiple of them said they would not recommend it for a younger audience due to the nature of the scenes. Again one of the tips in our Screens n Kids Playbook is Know your child. You know your Childs temperament, what they can handle, their sensitivity to stimulation and fear etc etc.
Yep hindsight is 20-20. I should have just used my common sense from the get go and changed the show instead of enduring all the skipping, covered eyes etc. For what? So in case you want a review on a kids movie , a TV show, podcast etc head over to commonsensemedi.org. I would highly recommend as their content is curated with the child in mind.