We recently spent time with several families in a vacation house. Someone kept putting in dvds of "kids" movies, of the monsters inc, kung fu panda variety. My DS5, who doesn't watch tv or movies, watched about 10 min of monsters inc and asked me if we could turn it off because it was "too scary". We couldn't do that with 8 other kids watching the movie, so he and I went a few feet away and started working on origami.
At home we do watch some sports on tv, and used to make him turn away for gory, violent commercials (which he did without minding). Recently we've told him he can decide what he doesn't want to watch/finds too scary, and look away. we still keep an eye out for particularly graphic ones and confirm that he's not looking.
anyway, this last movie incident got me thinking about my father's assertion that DS is living a too sheltered life. My view has been that I'd rather he use his excellent imagination and books we read to drive his play, rather than the (mostly) crappola that's on tv and in movies. But is there anything to the too sheltered life argument?
