Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: parents

  • Weekend Update

    There is a girl who lives nearby. We met her and her family almost immediately upon moving into this house and her and my daughter began hanging out. There have been times when they have spent more time together and times when they’ve spent less time together. I’ve never actively encouraged the friendship because I do not care for the parenting style of her parents. At the same time I have not discouraged the relationship either. There are certain things I will not allow when I feel their parenting would possibly impact my daughter’s safety, but as far as whether or not the girl makes a good friend, I’ve tried to leave that up to my daughter to sort out on her own.

    I had several reasons behind this. For one, I did not want to hold the girl responsible for what her parents have done, as long as she could more or less manage to behave herself in a way that didn’t irritate the crap out of me, I didn’t mind her being around. Also, I will not be standing beside my daughter throughout her life. She needs to determine for herself how to make judgments about people and exactly how much she is willing to put up with. She needs to learn how to sort out relationship problems on her own. I am more than happy to give her my opinion, even when she doesn’t want it, but I also try to acknowledge all the other points of view and leave the important parts, like whether or not to consider the girl a friend up to her. I will restrict her from taking part in certain activities with a person, but I will not make some ill-conceived attempt to control her feelings for another person. That would just lead to her stubbornly hanging onto horrible relationships just to prove me wrong. Besides, I have disliked more of her playmates than I’ve liked, so if I asserted my influence too strongly she’d just grow up to be a hermit on a hill with a rifle, and dammit I already called dibs.

    Anyhow, last year this girl started middle school (and her period) and she has been a-changin’. She has new friends who have labeled my daughter as “syoopid” because she doesn’t like The Pussy Cat Dolls, doesn’t watch the new whorrific Puddy Cat Dolls reality show, and she freakishly likes showtunes “what r thos?” Recently it has degenerated further. The girl began to make prank phone calls. When my daughter called her on it (between recognizing her voice, and umm… you know, caller ID) she got pissed off. Little neighborhood miss then decided to pass around our daughter’s cell phone number to a few friends. “I didn’t call you. That was my cousin. If you don’t believe me you are a bad friend and I don’t like you anymore.”

    Ah, the joys of being an adolescent.

    Now I am truthfully beyond fucking irritated because A) cell phone minutes cost money, and she is on a very restrictive plan because we mainly got it so we could be in touch with each other, I have no interest in her wandering about with a phone attached to her head all the time and B) I HATE NOISE so the damn thing ringing over and over is pissing me the fuck off.

    My first instinct is to walk over to the girl’s house and just give her a good spanking, followed perhaps by doing something violent with her phone. I really need my daughter to decide for herself how to handle it, and hopefully to put some actual thought into it first and not just jump into something. We’ve discussed various options and possible and likely results. Now I am waiting. Of course to top it all off my daughter is feeling hurt and pissed off. This means I am stuck in the house with a moody creature.

    So, how is your weekend?

  • Rated F’d

    We watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated this weekend.

    The subject matter irritated me to no end, as everyone who knows anything about me knew it would. The movie itself, well I wish it had been a bit better. While the content was something I care about, it definitely was not one of the stronger documentaries I have seen.

    I do not like the MPAA. Actually I heartily dislike the entire system, and that is not all the MPAA’s fault. From the TV networks, to the theater owners, to the studios, to the big chain retailers, they all irritate me.

    I do not like to be told what I can and cannot watch. I do not like to be told what my kid should and should not watch. Most of all I hate for the general public to be relying on a largely arbitrary “stamp” to determine what they let their children watch. It completely infuriates me when they won’t even pay attention to those stamps and then want to complain because they don’t like what their kid watches (or plays). The nanny state does not protect children, it destroys society by relieving so called parents of their responsibility to actually parent.

    One of the useful things about the internet is that there are several sites that do provide detailed content information about films. G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 and unrated mean nothing to me when it comes to deciding what I am comfortable allowing my daughter to watch. I want to know about themes. I want to know about scenes and the context of the scene. One of the sites that I used to check quite a bit, before they made it so incredibly broken and ugly for non-subscribers was screenit. I actually appreciated it enough that I did subscribe, but again, that was when it worked better for non-subscribers and then subscribers had perks. Now they make it rather unpleasant if you won’t subscribe, and I just preferred to support the old attitude.

    Anyhow, they have the following categories

    • Alcohol/Drugs
    • Blood/Gore
    • Disrespectful/Bad Attitude
    • Frightening/Tense Scenes
    • Guns/Weapons
    • Imitative Behavior
    • Jump Scenes
    • Music (Scary/Tense)
    • Music (Inappropriate)
    • Profanity
    • Sex/Nudity
    • Smoking
    • Tense Family Scenes
    • Topics To Talk About
    • Violence

    Which they first list off as mild, moderate, extreme, etc. If you see something that that makes you immediately certain you wouldn’t want to watch it, or let your child watch it, you can stop. If you are uncertain you can click down for detailed information. Which swear words, which body parts and how many, etc. Of course is you are looking for films with lots of full frontal, such a review can be useful too.

    This I find useful. PG-13 I don’t find useful at all.

    Now they could label a movie however they wanted and I wouldn’t care, except how they rate it affects me. If it is NC-17 a lot of theaters will not play it. They can’t place ads for it in many places. Walmart and Blockbuster won’t carry it. This means that they won’t be able to make nearly as much money, so there is a big push to cut it to an R. Instead of letting the actual consumers decide, the entire system is standing between artists and consumers and making choices on my behalf. Now they often release an unrated DVD later, but that just isn’t the same. For one thing, I have to wait until much later to see it. I do not have a giant screen and spectacular sound system in my house. Not only that, but in many of the cases the unrated DVD releases are no doubt different than the film they would have created if they had just been left alone to tell the story they wanted to tell. There is now added marketing pressure to make more of a difference between the R and unrated version. Then there is the other direction. Getting a G rating is a kiss of box office death if your core audience is about the age of 6, so they add a little extra crap (most often bodily function “humor”) to films to get at least that PG. The assignment of these ratings is affecting the films, leading us to a world with more product and less art.

    I won’t have anything to do with Blockbuster at all because of their policies on NC-17 movies. Their business, and they can run it their way, but I won’t give them my money. Actually I once quit a job over a policy shift along those lines at another video store, but that is a different story.

    Movies should all be rated R anyway, why should kids go see anything without a parent or guardian? Who is going to make them sit down and shut up and stop kicking my seat if they don’t have a parent with them? Oh wait, the parent will probably just be chatting on a cell phone, no doubt calling loudly to complain to a friend about how horrible it is that the movie showed a nipple. I hear so many parents complaining that a PG-13 movie had very objectionable content and should have been rated R. How many times are they going to fall for that PG-13 label and not do further research? Apparently over and over. Is every 13 year old they know the exact same maturity level as every 16 year old they know?

    I don’t even have the energy to start typing about how twisted it is that we seem to be so much more comfortable with violence in this country than we are with nudity. I did enjoy Darren Aronofsky’s assertion that bloodless, exciting, glorified, big action film violence should be for adults only, and lower rated movies should have to show painful, bloody, consequence filled violence instead.

    The MPAA is talking about making some changes, but small DIY improvements are not going to turn an outhouse into a mansion, or even a bathroom. Something is rotten in the state of asinine, power hungry, god fearing, we know what the world should be watching, homophobic, sexual repressed, braindead, holier than thou stupidity, but they are not going to do me the pleasure of bloodlessly cutting out the diseased whole.

    Netflix currently has Jesus Camp on the way to my house for my next viewing displeasure.

  • 2hyp0cr1t1cal4m3

    There is a website called 2smrt4u. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children joined together to fund a site to help teach safe and smart internet usage to teens.

    They have some reasonable tips, such as:

    DON’T
    • Post your cell phone number, address, or the name of your school
    • Post your friends’ names, ages, phone numbers, school names, or addresses
    • Add people as friends to your site unless you know them in person
    • Communicate with people you don’t know
    • Give out your password to anyone other than your parent or guardian
    • Meet in person with anyone you first “met” on a social networking site
    • Respond to harassing or rude comments posted on your profile
    • Make or post plans and activities on your site
    • Post photos with school names, locations, license plates, or signs
    • Post photos with the name of your sports team
    • Post sexually provocative photos
    • Respond to threatening or negative emails or IMs

    Not that I agree 100% with all of them, but it gives a better starting point than some kids have been given before.

    However…

    They also offer an IM ICON  , you know, so you can present yourself as a challenge and dare stalkers to try to find you.

    Best of all they are giving away a free ring. Really. It is free. All they want you to do is tell them your date of birth, your address and whether you are male or female. Don’t worry, they won’t ask for your address if you say you are under the age of 13.

    So obviously, it is teaching excellent online habits.