Last night my friend and I attended a community dialogue on the media and our children. I don’t think we were really the “target audience”, since they told us a bunch of stuff we already know (there are pervs on myspace, virtual pimps in video games, and sad lyrics in songs). Still, I learned something from the lecture, so I’m pleased.
I’ve always known that I liked the way that my parents approached the media and our choices, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that was so great about it. I think I understand a little better now.
One of the books that was mentioned last night was Reel Sprituality. I am not endorsing it, since I haven’t read it, but there was one section that I liked. They talked about the different ways that the church reacts to films, ranging from avoidance to divine encounter. In between these 2 extremes were caution, dialogue, and appropriation, respectively. There are times where you will choose all (or most) of the options on this scale, but the goal for most of the time is “dialogue”. As you dialogue with both yourself and your family about the media, you would ask probing questions like “Why do I like this?”, “How do I relate?”, “What is the artist trying to tell me?”, etc.
My parents did an excellent job with this. We watched shows that a lot of other kids weren’t allowed to watch, and then our family would discuss them. It wasn’t necessarily a formal discussion, but it was brought up and probed when there were deeper issues that my parents wanted to discuss. My husband’s family was the opposite. He wasn’t allowed to watch the Simpsons, Married With Children, or any of the other popular shows back then. By the time we met in college, we were both huge fans of the Simpsons, so obviously his parents plan didn’t exactly work out 
The thing is, whether you avoid everything or avoid nothing, you’re still going to end up with kids who need to make decisions for themselves once they get out in the world. They’ll have to decide what to avoid, what to watch, and how they will respond to it when they see it. If we don’t prepare them for that, then we are doing them a huge disservice.
I had kind of been slipping into more of an “avoidance” standpoint, even though I knew that it wasn’t where I ultimately wanted to go, so I’m glad that I was able to discuss and learn some more last night. I feel slightly better equipped to make decisions for our family, and my husband and I talked about it a lot last night, which was nice. 
If you’ve read the book, or anything else on this topic, then I’d love to get a full review!
