No Place for Violence in Storybooks

As a new dad I remember one of the first movies we happened to watch after our daughter fell asleep was a newer version of Robin Hood with Russel Crowe. I've always loved good action movies, I was a complete shoot em up junkie growing up, and I was just hoping for a good Gladiator type of movie. I remember by the end of the movie thinking oh my God, there's so much senseless killing going on, why are we watching this. I was broken, now that I had a child I looked at every single miscellaneous extra getting chopped to pieces as someone's precious little baby. I still love action movies and I'm a huge Game of Thrones fan still, but when it comes to gratuitous violence I just can't stomach it like I used to. Even more so I definitely don't want that to become a part of my children's world until they're a whole lot older.

I remember my mom always being so adamantly opposed to me having toy weapons in the house, and now I'm finding myself doing the same thing. That first month we had Lilly I went through our entire DVD and tape collection (sorry my wife and I are old school) to remove every blatantly violent movie. Sorry horror flics, that was pretty much all of you. We were left with comedies and some lighter action movies, because that's all I wanted our daughters life to be filled with, nothing but the good things that make you happy.

I also first started reading Lilly a Spider-Man bedtime collection when she was about 2 years old. I thought it was great, I love Spider-Man and my daughter was really into it, the stories seemed pretty mild, and we were having a great time looking forward to it every night for about a week. My wife, way more perceptive than I, noticed that Lilly was actually starting to act a lot more aggressively and had started talking about bad guys all the time. It was way too much for her and I hadn't picked up any of the clues. We stopped that book and actually went to the local comic shop, New Wave Comics in Skippack, PA, to look for a gentler Spider-Man introduction and they recommended the fantastic Marvel junior lineup that was just right for us.

So what's the right balance? For us it took some testing and really paying attention to our children's behavior during the rest of the day, not just during story time. Do any of you have advice that you could offer, please post it on the comments below or write me anytime at patrick@dreamfishpress.com.

Thanks for reading and keep dreaming big...

- Patrick

#opinion