Day 305.

Remember my Toy Story post not even a month ago? Remember the innocence I wanted to keep in my children - not pushing them to grow up too soon, especially because of media that I chose for them? Yeah...me too. NOW I do.

I checked out Pinocchio from the library and thought it was a good family movie night choice. From my memory of the movie, it was pretty tame. I took them to a children's theater production of Pinocchio a few years ago, and it wasn't scary. So, we sat down with popcorn, grapes, cheese and turkey roll-ups to enjoy it together this evening.

Then, I got this feeling I should check out commonsensemedia.org. I usually do (with fuller feature-length stuff, which they've hardly watched any of), and didn't know why I hadn't done it before for Pinocchio. Here's what I read:

"Some scenes and themes may be intense for younger or sensitive viewers, such as when Pinocchio is kidnapped and caged, threatened with destruction, can't find his father, and/or nearly drowns. They should also be aware that Pinocchio's friend Lampwick introduces him to cigar smoking, but is punished for it. Kids may be disturbed by Pleasure Island, where "bad boys" are turned into donkeys and sent to work in salt mines."

Ummm...yeah. Then I read parent reviews:

"this is the most inapropreate G movie i have ever scene!!!!!! and for these ressons: there is underage drinking and smoking, some vilonce and peril, and language like "jackass". I think they should have rated it PG-13. Or at least a PG because having it G rated with all that stuff in it is wrong!"

Ok, get over the fact that she can't spell inappropriate or reasons or violence. And it's just one parent (there were other negative reviews on there). But that was enough to make me frown. I passed the laptop to Jason to read, as Jiminy Cricket was finishing "When You Wish Upon a Star." We did some parent sign language and lip reading to agree this was not a good idea.

I am grateful for white lies.

I am not a fan of lying to my children. Most often, I would rather tell them the truth and have something difficult to explain than to lie to them. But I also felt like an idiot. I checked this movie out for them - they didn't pick it, and they didn't even care about watching it. I wanted to watch it with them, and Jason and I are always looking for fun things to watch with them for our occasional movie nights. I didn't feel like explaining why I didn't look at the reviews ahead of time or why it wasn't appropriate. I just felt like turning it off and watching Pooh...or something equally as harmless. These are our babies, and by golly, what is the rush to expose them to "jackass" and kidnapping. I don't feel like I'm sheltering them, but rather just not pushing them over the media cliff too soon.

So, Jason gave me the go ahead and I pushed stop. We both did a really bad job (but sufficient for this age bracket) of acting...and we easily convinced them the DVD wasn't working. They didn't care one bit, and we chose a Backyardigans episode that we all thoroughly enjoyed.