Any new parent quickly discovers that their child’s choices need making for them throughout their early years. At first, it’s everything – what to eat/wear/do today – and then the child starts to take more interest and you can let the little things fall under their jurisdiction. Some choices are big ones, though, and although, to the child, it might seem like a simple either-or call, you know, as an older, wiser soul, that this simple decision is going to impact their lives in tiny ways throughout their youth and far into adulthood.
I had one of those choices to make today.
I didn’t think it would happen so soon; my son only turned three last month, and I figured I had another year, maybe two, before this happened. I was wrong.
With hindsight, it was an easy call to make on his behalf. You analyse and weigh up and generally over-think it, but in your heart, you know the answer. You know which of the two choices is morally, spiritually and philosophically the the right one.
It might be a coincidence, but my son told me he loved me for the first time today. It was a shock when he said it, and the emotional impact on me was huge, but now I’ve had time to digest the details of the event, regardless of whether he said it knowing how close he came to taking a different path in his life today, a path I decided was not his to take, I know, as much as anyone can, that I truly deserve that love.
No child of mine is starting the series with The Phantom Menace.
You say that now Steve but one day he’ll find the DVD hidden on the shelf and before you know it he’ll tell you that JarJar is his favourite character. You’ll want to cry. I did…
You have to control this very closely – this is important stuff! Having twins, the tempatation was to experiment and show one the original trilogy first, and the other the prequel travesties. But we decided this amounted to cruel and unusual torture (plus, unless we isolated them from one another till all six had been screened, it would be impossible to stop them from spoilering each other). In the end, we did the decent thing and showed them in the proper order (episode IV first), on a nice big screen – made an event of it.
It is always an option to pretend that episdoes 1-3 simply don’t exist – but as Darren has implied, this can come a cropper – have your story prepared. The *real* danger, is that unless you’re super vigilant, he’ll get to see this stuff at a friends house, or at an after school club or something before you can intervene. We planted the ideas in the boys heads early on via dinnertime conversations that a) the prequels were rubbish and of curiosity interest only b) they mustn’t watch any of the Harry potter films until they’ve read the corresponding book (we’re up to film four) and c) they can’t watch any LOTR films until they’ve read the book. Seems to be working out OK so far.