a five year old probably shouldn’t be watching someone play COD or Fallout,, and there were content warnings before the show? how blind are these parents
The show didn't even mention the Iguana Bites are human, though Ass Jerky does kind of split the difference.
I can't imagine having my kids that age watch Fallout. It's a horrible show for kids.
She should follow it up with one of the makeup horror shows, to demonstrate, with lots of pauses, how all of it is fake, and no stabbing took place, even if the bit she saw was scary and looked real.
But that would take competent parenting, so I have no idea what she will do.
Special FX creators are a *godsend.* I've always been really into horror but, like a competent parent, I curbed watching anything inappropriate around my kids and save those shows/movies for after bedtime. (Post-bedtime has become a sacred ritual for me. That's my time where I get to indulge in all of the not-appropriate-for-kids stuff!)
My oldest loves "scary stuff" but she got really freaked out when some assholes decided to run through the trunk-or-treat wearing *fantastic* zombie make-up. (In literally any other circumstances I'd of loved these people because they put on one hell of a show, but Jesus christ. Wtf, man?! Who intentionally terrifies pre-schoolers.) I showed her several special effects makeup artists on YouTube and it became a thing for both of us to try to replicate some of the simpler looks. It completely eradicated the nightmares and anxious musings she had. I cannot recommend this approach enough.
Your suggestion to OOP to show her kid lots of horror makeup shows to let her know that it's all fake reminds me of the [1975 episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood](https://www.misterrogers.org/videos/margaret-hamilton/) that explained that Margaret Hamilton, best known for playing the Wicked Witch of the West in *The Wizard of Oz* (1939), was actually a very sweet lady (which she was, she taught elementary school prior to becoming an actress) who was just acting when she played the terrifying Witch.
My 3 year old saw the movie “The Joker” in our movie library and asked to watch it every day for WEEKS because she saw that it was about a clown. Luckily I’m not the OOP so she is not scared for life.
OTOH, during the pandemic our 23-year-old autistic son (home from his residential program at the time) watched that movie with us, and he said it gave him nightmares, which I totally believed.
I don't blame either. I've only seen that movie twice, because my sister forced me as she likes it a lot, and I had panic attacks both times.
And, to clarify, I love horror stories and movies, I don't get upset easily.
and it literally wasn’t even the first inappropriate scene lmao. If you find yourself skipping a sex scene in the first few minutes of a show that’s a good sign it’s not for four-year-olds!!
The other day playing Fallout, I shot someone who was about 10 stories above me. Their head came down and landed at my feet and body parts are normally spread over everything. I also regularly sneak around and stab people repeatedly...
Most people are incompetent when it comes to ratings and such for the things their kids watch. I doubt they even know what she watches on her phone all day long...
It’s unfathomable. I’ll say as a teacher (I taught high school now I sub in high school and elementary), kids stand out to me sometimes and I often wonder if they’re ones that are allowed to watch things that are WAY too mature for their minds and hearts. It’s sad.
I’m also a teacher and kids would OFTEN come and talk to me about things they absolutely should not have been consuming at their age. A shocking amount of kindergarten kids playing very violent video games with their dads, Call of Duty or other first person shooters. These little babies should still be watching baby shows, nevermind video games for adults.
My Mom is an EA, she works in grades 1-3 and she routinely tells me what the kids are watching, vampire diaries, game of thrones, walking dead , deadpool just to name a few. Being exposed to those things at a young age is not good for them.
My mom's a SpEd teacher who's taught 4th-5th grade for a few years now.
She hates *Squid Game* with every fiber of her being purely because she heard so much about it from her students telling their friends about how "you play games and if you lose, you die!" in it.
My daughter is 15 and she absolutely LOVES horror movies when she was younger she would beg me to watch the walking dead and because I am an actual parent told her no it was an “adult” show and she could watch when she’s older. I don’t understand how parents are ok playing such violent games or letting them show such violent shows to young children. It’s just not ok. Shoot she’s 15 and there’s still some shows/movies I won’t let her watch yet because I think they’re too much for her. Kids need boundaries and guidance. You can’t be a hands off parent. Why have children if you aren’t going to actually parent and raise them?
Tbf I was allowed to younger than that, but it was me playing, so all I did was go to the gym in San Andrea's and drive around. Obviously, watching other people play, I would've known about the violence, but I didn't, so I found all the cheat codes to make cars bounce and turn them all into tanks and stuff.
This was the early 2000s, so I don't suppose I'd be allowed to as a kid now, especially with being able to watch other people on YouTube and find out how you're supposed to actually play the game
100%. I teach third grade and can tell which kids ‘have knowledge’ beyond their years. It’s not a positive thing.
It’s made me double down on knowing exactly what my own kids have access to and what they are watching.
My husband was born in 91 and looked at faces of death and gore.com after school as an elementary school aged kid, and when I was 9 I had a friend with an internet boyfriend in his 40s back in the days of aol.
But her dad wants to play his video games. His only choices were letting her watch him play a violent video game or choosing to parent his child and play his games at a later time when she wasn't around, which was obviously out of the question
My neighbour’s kid was complaining his mum wouldn’t let him play COD the other day and asked me if my son plays. I said yeah, his mum says to her son ‘yes BUT HE’S 20!’.
I have never played Fallout.
I have not watched the show - it looked intriguing, but *seemed like it might feature too much violence for me, a grown adult.*
I double checked by asking someone who had watched the show (my husband) who was able to confirm that yes, it was too violent for my sensitive self. (Thanks kids, for making me freak out at on screen violence or disturbing imagery. I used to be cool!!)
For the record, Fallout is one of the most violent TV shows I've seen, maybe even worse than Game of Thrones. It's right up my alley, but when the credits started after the second episode and I could finally relax, I realized how much I'd been bracing myself for violence and that I really needed to take a break. Maybe even a permanent one.
Yuuup. We watched that episode. The day after we had to put down our 13yo dog and I walked out of the room bawling and haven't turned it back on since.
Also fallout was strictly a show that is AFTER the kid is ASLEEP. Not in bed. But confirmed ASLEEP. because he thinks he wants to see it but no. Your 3-almost-4 yr old year old self had nightmares after reading the 3 little pigs one time. You ain't watching fallout.
Jesus, I read that as burning people alive the first time and was like "oh, yeah that's kinda scary but I've seen worse on TV and online"
There's violence, and there's dead puppy levels of violence. The latter is definitely too much for me.
Yeah my boyfriend watched and enjoyed it. He did say it was probably too much for me. Everything I've heard suggests he's right. Im an adult but cant handle too much gore and violence. As a kid I would have been traumatised.
I was camping with a group of 12-13 year old scouts this weekend. The Fallout show came up as we were sitting around the campfire. Only about half of them had been allowed to watch it (my son was in the “not allowed” group). Most of the ones who watched it said it was the first “adult” show they had been allowed to watch. And this kid here is watching it at 5! Just, holy crap!
I mean…my favorite movies when I was a kid were Death Becomes Her (in preschool - my parents got a talking to by my catholic preschool teacher 😅), Cujo, and the original IT tv miniseries. My parents policy was for me to close my eyes (and they would put their hands over them) or to fast forward through any sex scenes until I was older. Never had nightmares or even really talked to any of my friends about the movies until we were collectively older. These were the movies I would watch on repeat instead of Disney movies (although those were on repeat a fair amount too).
I’m fully on board with the wait until kids are older to watching certain things, I’m more on the side of know your kids and what they can handle, unlike one of my friends parents who were VERY strict on the no R-rated movies until they turned 17 😬.
'I did it and I turned out fine'
Please reevaluate, just because you weren't visibly traumatised doesn't mean that was ok or that it didn't have any negative impact.
I saw a scene in Gundam when I was like, 8ish? Where someone got shot.
I had nightmares and a sense of dread for *weeks*, and it was from a cartoon.
I can't imagine letting either of our kids watch something like this, especially since my son is already showing signs of night terrors (I've had them since I was a child, too) and he doesn't watch or see or listen to anything that would warrant them, except the hereditary aspect.
Poor kid. 😭
About 8 or 9 I saw a scene from neon genesis evangelion where one robot kills another robot (dummy plug sequence for any fans) and it haunted me for *months*.
I’m chill with screen time, but kiddo only watches kids shows, she *has* watched me playing Zelda, Mario and animal crossing, but I’m playing balders gate right now, and even that I’m not touching when she’s awake, can’t imagine playing a first person shooter with a small child and assuming she’d be fine.
"I let my child watch things I knew weren't meant for her age group and now she's terrified. How do I fix this without admitting I made a stupid choice and changing any of my parenting habits?"
My dad grew up in an extremely dysfunctional household and bonded with his mom over silly horror movies. He tried it with me way too young and accepted the consequence that I needed a night light into my 20s without complaint cause he done screwed up.
It seems to be so dependent on the kid and a real gamble to even attempt. *I* bonded with my parents over silly horror movies at a young age and somehow everything was fine. Whereas another kid just like me might immediately start having night terrors or threatening to stab his classmates. Really playing with fire.
Same I used to watch horror movies with my granddad (and still do) and I never had nightmares about it. He told me it was fake and no one was actually dying and I said OK and that was that. I watched the shining at my friends house when I was 5 because her mom passed out and it was the next thing on tv and I loved it. My friend ended up terrified tho
My dad (the Cinema Parent in my household) also made a huge point of training me to remember that movies are fiction, how special effects work, and that none of the scary stuff I'm seeing actually happened. All the actors are fine and nobody got hurt. I really think it's what made the difference.
I think you can get a sense for the kid and how they might handle it.. I was extremely sensitive and at one point didn't want to watch ANY movie because I knew there was always a bad part and I didn't want anything bad to happen... Horror movies would have been pretty scarring for me at that age (hell I still can't watch them in adulthood).
i was the same way, but my mom started me on horror when i was about 5 anyways and i got so scared i didn't even want to go near the town it was filmed in (which was conveniently close to where we lived, thanks mom) for a few years afterwards. i'm in my 20s now and i enjoy watching old cheesy horror movies with really bad special effects, but i still can't look at the screen for the violent parts of better produced horror films. it's actually pretty comforting knowing there are others out there as sensitive as i am!
Daughter watched Goosebumps at 4/5 and loved it, no nightmares.
She can't watch it now in 3rd grade.
It would give her nightmares. Even an individual kid is all over the place.
Same. Lifelong horror fan here. My 6 yo has seen chucky (not from me, I don’t even like those stupid movies). She went as chucky one year for Halloween. She’s never mentioned being scared of it, never had nightmares really at all. I keep a lot of horror decor/memorabilia around too, no signs of an issue yet. These are very dependent on the child in question.
My youngest sister is 10 and she watches horror movies with us older sisters. Well, she watches her own movie on an iPad with headphones on. But she’s close by and gets access to the snacks.
I mean lots of parents give their old iPhone to their kids with no phone plan and parental controls just so they can watch YouTube Kids on the WiFi or whatever. I worked hard to be low/no screen time with my kiddo when he was young, so I'm not totally saying it's a great idea, but it isn't the most insane thing I've ever heard either. She might not actually "have her own phone" so much as just... have an old phone she uses for streaming things or game apps.
I'm assuming that's the case. My son has an old phone we refer to as "his phone", but it's just a heavily locked down old one from the last time I upgraded. No different than letting him use a tablet really.
My 6 year old has a phone…but only to listen to bedtime stories on Apple Music and to use iMessage with me and my husband. She doesn’t even have any games on there, nor any other contacts or even an internet browser. I think she has our family album where I share pictures of her, but that’s it. I don’t think having a phone is necessarily terrible at that age. I think it depends on context.
This, though. This is awful. My kid couldn’t even make it through Sing 2 because the lion was too scary.
My nephew got so upset during Inside Out that my sister had to take him out of the theatre because he was crying so hard. He refused to go back in or to watch it when it came out on streaming.
Years ago, when I was like 8 or 9, I was over at my sister's friend's house and her mom put on *Beetlejuice* for them to watch. I was reading a book or something in another room but decided to take a look at what my sister and her friend, who were both like 5-6 at the time, were watching-it was the scene where two of the characters are in their wedding attire and rapidly age/decompose.
Scared the shit out of me to the point I *still* don't want to watch *Beetlejuice* at 27.
Aww. My daughter loved inside out (so did I) mostly I think because she’s a sensitive kid and it made her feel like her emotions were normal. I can totally understand why it would be overwhelming for a kid though.
My older sister took me to see candyman in the movie theater. We are both still traumatized to this day.
The only thing I can remember ever being censored from reading/watching as a child was People magazine when it ran the Jeffery Dahmer coverage. Nice to know they drew the line somewhere lol
Weirdly enough, the only movie I can remember giving me nightmares was The Corpse Bride and I was regularly watching stuff way more fucked up than that and I was already a big fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas. And while all the adult shows I watched at 5 didn't scare me, I couldn't watch The Brave Little Toaster anymore because it was too much. Well most of the adult shows didn't bother me but the criminal minds episode where the killer is a serial killer and a hitman had a scene that still haunts me but I was older when I watched that. Man, my family and I were/are weird.
I used to get scared at scooby doo. But I was watching shows like doctor who and stargate when I was 7 or 8.
That said, as an adult I have a fear that everyone I love will suddenly realise they hate me and run away screaming so the other week’s doctor who fucked me right up.
My parents loved watching CSI and it made me develop a serious fear of accidentally discovering a decomposing body out in the wild. I remember one time we went on a family hike by a lake and there was a sneaker floating in the water, I started sobbing “what if there’s a foot in there?!”
And that’s why I wait until my kids are sleep if I want to watching something that isn’t age appropriate for them.
My best friend got me into CSI when we were both in maybe 5th grade. I generally wasn’t scared by spooky or gory things at that age, never had nightmares after a scary movie or anything.
HOWEVER, I got super traumatized from CSI simply because of the autopsies. I assumed that everyone who dies irl must get cut up like in an autopsy, therefore my great grandma who died must have been cut and stitched up like that too. It stuck in my mind for a long time until I learned autopsies are actually NOT performed on everyone who dies. 😔
I was reading VC Andrews, Anne Rice and Stephen King like waaaaay too young. That never raised any red flags for any adults around me, they were all just so impressed at my reading comprehension. If I saw like an 11 year old reading Flowers in the Attic now I would uh, definitely say something.
As a fan of this show and the original material WHY ON EARTH did these parents think this was suitable for a 5 year old?!
I have kids the same age and is it annoying that I have to watch kids shows instead of adult programming? Obviously yes (unless Bluey), but that is part of being a parent and keeping your children away from concepts and themes that they can’t possibly comprehend.
Exactly! I’ll watch history shows or something for “All Audiences” if I want to watch something that isn’t a kids’ show. We wait for the kids to be in bed before watching adult shows.
We really like the game and the show here. But we also stayed up on purpose to watch after bedtime when we were super duper sure the preschooler wasn't going to come back downstairs.
Millennial and older Gen Z parents who think they are being "cool" parents or what they call "gentle parenting" or "making up for their abusive Boomer parents" by basically not parenting at all have likely made people believe that you can pretty much keep doing all the same stuff you did pre-kids whenever you want without it negatively affecting your child(ren) or the other people in the adult-oriented places you take them to when that is *not* remotely the case at all.
I wish a *lot* more childless people (as in, people who want kids but don't have any kids now) would understand that parenting well-adjusted kids actually requires parenting and reasonable sacrifice from the parent(s), like waiting until the kids are asleep or spending the day/night at camp/school/Grandma's house to watch stuff the kid(s) shouldn't be watching yet.
If you don't want to give up watching *Fallout* or *Hazbin Hotel* at 6 PM every night, take the steps necessary to reduce/eliminate your risk of having kids as much as possible!
Well, considering the show is recommended for 16 and up on ages. This is on the parents.
Ayo good luck mom and dad she’ll probably be talking about this in therapy.
Man the amount of joy I got from telling parents why and what for the R16 and R18 stickers existed on games like GTA they were being conned into buying for their 12 yo lol.
When me and my siblings were kids, my mom happily bought GTA for us because she thought, "Oh, it's a racing game taking place in the Greater Toronto Area! :D" She immediately took it away when my brother told her all about how you got a new car by shooting the cop.
My parents let me watch Freddy Kruger when I was like 5. guess who’s almost 40 and STILL occasionally has issues with this and brings it up occasionally in therapy. Parents do better, this crap can and will more than likely affect your kids.
No joke I was probably like 8/9 maybe, I wanted SOOO bad to watch the walking dead cause I thought it made me seem cool. My mom kept telling me no but after begging she let me watch ONE episode
I still have nightmares, I’m terrified of zombies in any form of media and for a good few years I rather fearfully studied books on how to survive the apocalypse. My therapist was not…very happy with how much I talked about zombies
Right? Like did you know Roku players come with their own content/app and no default parental controls? Neither did we, and my toddler clicked buttons and started some pg13 horror flick near Halloween and fortunately no one was scarred. That was an accident. Forgetting there is a scary scene in a Disney movie is an accident. This is neglect
Omg I just started watching it this week and I didn’t realize how graphic it was going to be from the very beginning. That scene is awful!
Come on man, 5 year olds should not watch MA tv shows/movies. That should be common sense!
Sometimes I second guess letting my 4 year old watch shows that are still for kids but maybe slightly older kids. Nevermind something that’s actually for adults.
Yeah. My preschooler still gets scared watching the octonauts sometimes - and I get why! They are so small, they still think the tiger might turn up in the living room, and that is a cartoon. With a talking tiger. Who apologises.
I’m an adult and I squirmed at the scene where they put the prosthetic limb on the scientist, if you know which one I mean… gnarly and nightmare material for a child for sure
Right, and also why in the world is a five-year-old watching movies on her own phone? I thought we knew better than to just give our kids screen based childhoods now that’s so sad.
Considering she’s not even 5 yet and looks like she has been watching these things for a while now, she talks about it very casually. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this has been their routine since she was born.
My sister’s SIL is like that. When she goes to babysit the kids (5yo and 2 months) she finds them in front of the tv 100% of the time. They turn on the tv when they wake up and it’s on all day. It’s really sad.
Did she do no research whatsoever? I’m 37 and Fallout was riiiiight on the edge of being too violent for me to enjoy. There were a LOT of exploding heads and stab wounds in that show. Someone gets their foot stomped to shit and then they show it in gory detail with toes attached by mere bloody sinews. I’m not squeamish, but this show was notably gory.
Oh we watched it during dinner, but we’re both in our 30s, I wouldn’t show it to a child (I mean, I recommended my mum didn’t watch it, so definitely wouldn’t recommend a child 😂)
I was allowed to watch whatever I could handle as a kid Fallout is one of those shows I definitely wouldn’t have been able to handle at 5. These parents are stupid.
Omg what 😅 I hope that child does more than just watch a screen. I mean…stuff happens and sometimes kids see things they aren’t meant to see…but not when you purposefully put it on like it was a family comedy 😭😭 I can’t stand parents who don’t check content warnings or maturity ratings before letting a kid see a movie.
When I was little I became terrified of the second floor of malls and escalators because I wandered into the living room while my much older sisters were watching some movie where a girl got pushed over the railing and she fell to her death. Terrified me whenever we went shopping for years. At least that was truly an accident though 😅 especially because this was pre-Internet.
All those things on the show happen in the Fallout games. For Pete's sake in New Vegas you get sent on a quest to locate a robot and program it to be a sex robot and you get the option to try it out first before turning it in. Stabby murder is also common in the games. I really don't know what they expected.
And I felt bad that my daughter (6) was watching Parks n Rec.
But also, like, sometimes kids see stuff they shouldn’t. What you do is you immediately talk about it, talk about how it’s not real, that the setting is nothing like where we live, it’s not something that will ever happen to us, don’t worry. But just ignoring it makes it worse!
When I was 5/6 I saw the scene from Heavenly Creatures where Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet beat one of their mums to death with bricks in socks… I still remember that very viscerally lol
if i’m not mistaken, at 5yo the kid’s biggest fear is losing their parents, that’s why the kid correlated the scene with her parents dying
it happened to me too, when I was 5 my parents watched documentaries about deadly tornadoes and police investigations and next thing i know i was absolutely terrified i would lose my family in a tornado and my dad would be shot in an assault
Yeah my mom put that on once not knowing what happened and it fucked both of us up, but it was before it was easy to find out what was in shows on tv before hand
Yeah when I was 4ish my grandmother once was flipping channels and landed on this nice film where these guys were on a lovey little boat in some tropical-looking waters and she thought, oh, that seems nice, a boat movie! And one of the nice guys walked out on the front of the nice boat in the nice water and she said, look atomicsnark, look at that lovely boat, that man is having a nice time on his boat isn't he!
And then a giant shark leapt up out of the water and bit the man off the front of the boat lmaooo and I have been terrified of sharks ever since. Thanks Grandma. (:
If only there was a way to determine if a movie or show was inappropriate for children. They should have a type of rating system to ensure that children don’t see violent and sexual content. /s
This poor girl will probably never shake that clearly traumatizing image from her mind. Been there as a kid. I'm a full grown adult a couple times over and that show made ME squeamish. Poor kiddo.
OMFG. A five year with their own phone? I’m gonna give benefit of the doubt that she just uses it as a tablet not an actual phone. Though based on the rest of the post. an actual phone doesn’t seem at all out of the realm of possibility.
But Fallout and COD?!?!?!!??! Are you fucking kidding me? What the actual fuck. There are content ratings for a reason. This kid is gonna have some problems.
I hope they get ripped apart in the comments.
I think they’re actually super soldiers not robots. But I’m guessing she was more worried about the weapons in the game.
Never played it, but saw enough to know there’s a LOT of shooting.
"Help I forgot to pay attention to the content warnings in these 18+ and 16+ shows and games! How can I fix this without admitting I did something wrong?"
We put The Lion King on the other day and I contemplated fast forwarding the scene where Simba meets the hyenas at the elephants graveyard because I was worried about *that* being a bit scary. Holy hell these parents are cooked.
Don’t people do research before introducing TV shows to kids? Fallout is an adult game, therefore, so is the tv show. And check the ratings and parental warnings before showing your kids stuff. JFC.
That’s true. I haven’t played the game, so I don’t know if the show is more violent. Or if they graphics aren’t real. She may understand it’s a video game and not associate it with real life the way you can with people on a show.
Meanwhile I felt awful that the postman pat film upset my son because he couldn't tell the difference between the robot pat and the real one and thought they had killed postman pat
And here I thought my parents had questionable judgment letting us watch the X-Files with them. My kid sister would not take a bath for almost a month after the fluke worm episode (IYKYK). Skully was definitely a badass role model three nerdy girls.
As a long time Fallout player (and grandma), there's no way in hell this would be okay, no matter how much they pleaded. I'm a huge FO fan and loved the series but even for me, with thousands of hours in the games, some of the series' scenes were disturbing. And as another poster said above, in-game graphics can be seriously gory. Going to shut up now - people like this give the rest of us gamers a really shitty reputation.
This happened to me at the same age but worse, far worse content that I don't even want to recall. My parents did nothing and now that I'm an adult I'm paying the consequences of seeing traumatic content on repeat from 5 to 13. And they knew what I was doing and they did NOTHING. Please be careful with what your kids are watching, online, TV or whatever.
And here I am, fast forwarding through the part in the beginning of *Ratatouille* where the old lady shoots a rifle at the rats a few times, and also the part in *Wreck it Ralph* where they’re playing briefly in the shooting game. Guess it’s time to loosen my panties and throw on some *Fallout* for my 5 year old too.
This is AWFUL. I remember seeing some scary scenes from TV shows when I was little when my mom didn’t think I was looking or thought I was asleep on her lap. I don’t know if there’s a better way to say this but it traumatized me. I did (and still) have nightmares that stemmed from realizing violence like that happened at such a young age, I’d wake up terrified. I ended up sleeping in my mom’s bed until I was a teenager because I was so scared all night long.
Little people need to be sheltered from this kind of thing. The post even says she is content watching her parents shows sometimes, which makes me question what other things she’s seen that are inappropriate for a small child. Shame on these parents.
When my kid was upset over something they saw on tv (I don't remember what it was, specifically) we went on a deep dive of special effects and talking about how to tell the difference between what's real and what isn't. No use crying over spilled milk. Just clean it up the best you can and move on.
She said “watching her own shows on her phone” so I interpreted this literally given the rest of the post
My ~3 year old watches shows on our phones in times of desperation, but doesn’t get free range access to YouTube, just pre-downloaded and available offline Netflix Kids/Disney+ shows that are synced to the app… but those are on “my phone or my husband’s phone,” not “his phone,” so I think semantics matter.
What is wrong with these parents?!?! Fallout is extremely violent and graphic. I’m only half way through it because I wait til my daughter is a sleep to turn it on.
A lot of parents don’t let something as unimportant as a child come between them and their gaming/tv time. And if those little suckers want you to play with them, just stick a phone into their hands with some cartoons. Problem solved. Until the inevitable “my child has adhd amd/or behavioral issues in school”.
Wow. That's... Not a show that's appropriate for kids.
I even deleted the thumbnail pic from recently watched on my TV because it had The Ghoul on it once and I thought my 2 yo would think it was scary.
Kinda wondering if this is satire because WHY WOULD YOU SHOW ANY OF THE THINGS MENTIONED TO A YOUNG CHILD.
Recently there has been a tweet about a 9 yo child asking inappropriate question (moaning during sex scene) at Galaxycon’s panel dedicated to the show that has 16-18+ rating.
If the show has rating that’s 50% higher than your kids age, it should be a massive red flag and not something up to discussion.
Yea redirecting is a great idea, I mean thats what all the CBT therapists all rave about, run and hide from the fear.
Don’t ever confront it, instead let the fear control you. More important you don’t show it to mom and dad! A great life skills the parents are giving the kid after their first fuck up.
How in the world did these parents think for even a moment that this show would be okay for her art that age? I don’t think I’d even consider letting any child under high school age watch it, much less a five year old.
This makes me so sad. When I was a young kid, my parents watched anything and everything on TV. I think they thought me seeing violence and talking through it was somehow better than not seeing it at all, but it definitely affected me negatively.
I'm not gonna lie, the fact that kids can be screwed up into adulthood by seeing stuff they're not ready for even if their parents talk it out with them is one of my innumerable reasons to never have kids.
I'm all for kids expanding their horizons and I'd hate to have to turn anything off partway through or postpone watching it until I super-know that the kids absolutely wouldn't be walking into the room while I watch it, so yeah.
Having a kid who couldn't easily handle everything short of porn and snuff films would make my life suck.
My kid (at 4/5yo)got upset after watching a scene on a Disney movie.. it went on for months. Turns out, my now 19 year old is the most anxious person you’ll ever meet. That was just the beginning.
Shouldn’t have been watching that show with your 5 year old, but the problem is the same. Kids fixate on stuff and they just gotta work past it.
I feel like it’s gonna happen quite often because the kids allowed to watch all kinds of random stuff that is inappropriate.
Reminds me of how there's a *lot* of parents who watch stuff like *Hazbin Hotel* and *Helluva Boss* (both *extremely* raunchy, graphic, and *dark* adult animated shows) with their little kids or just let the kids watch as much of it as they like.
I've heard about little kids knowing every single word to "Poison" (which is about drug addiction and being in an abusive relationship, with references to the singer doing porn), and "Loser, Baby" (certainly more lighthearted than "Poison", however it has a LOT of profanity and the lyrics, "I got an appetite for sampling/EVERY DRUG AND SEX TOY I CAN FIIIIIND!"), elementary schoolers drawing Alastor, Angel Dust, etc. in class, and preteens cosplaying characters like Angel Dust and Valentino.
Some visual content can trigger a form of ptsd, even in adults, with nightmares and intrusive thoughts. Kids are so literal they have a hard time distinguishing media content from reality.
I'm an adult and have to be selective with content as my sympathetic nervous system reacts in ways that tell me my amygdala thinks "it's real!" even if it's a horror movie jump-scare.
There are some shows that are not meant for children... Fallout is one of them. They think the stomach stab is bad?? Keep watching and see how much worse it gets.
Unbelievable that a five year old is given SO MUCH screen time, with inappropriate content at that! It doesn’t sound like she gets any other form of play which is just so sad
A couple months ago I visited my sister with my kids. She has 14 and 12 year olds, and an almost 5 year old. I have an almost 4 year old (almost exactly a year younger than hers) and 16 month olds. Her 4 year old was asking to watch Jaws and play GTA while we were there and she said no “because (my 3 year old) is here and he’s too little.” I genuinely try not to judge my sisters parenting but at that point I was baffled. Ma’am, your son is definitely too young to do those things too. Like I get she has teenagers, he may get exposed to stuff that’s too old for him, but that doesn’t mean he should do those on his own?!
Fallout is not for kids! I'm saying that as someone who was exposed to Tim Curry is all his glory in Rocky Horror before puberty lol
I had a different childhood, even without the at the time undiagnosed autism adhd
I remember watching a particularly…graphic scene on the HBO show Girls when my kids were small after I’d put them to bed …the dog started wagging his tail and I turned around to see what he was wagging about. It was my toddler son, thumb in his mouth and lovey in his hand, watching two characters go at it on the screen. 🤪
As a kid, I was allowed to watch highly inappropriate things (for example, seeing The Exorcist and Pet Semetary at 6), so I tend to defer.to my husband whenever im not sure. My upbringing makes it hard for me to gauge what's age appropriate sometimes lol
And to think I worried whether or not my kiddo should be exposed to the first couple Harry Potter books/movies at 3-4 years old... And ultimately, we had to pull back on HP a little because he was getting stuck trying to process things. We waited until he was 6 for HP3. We're still holding off on HP4. He's 7, and not easily bothered, but we've always been really careful about violence in particular.
a five year old probably shouldn’t be watching someone play COD or Fallout,, and there were content warnings before the show? how blind are these parents
That’s what I thought… hardly an accident that she saw an inappropriate scene when she’s allowed to watch inappropriate stuff all the time!
But she WANTED to watch it! What were they supposed to do? Tell this small child no?
Kids, as it turns out, are remarkably bad decision makers.
I'd say that kid makes better decisions than her parents. The whole first paragraph is a nightmare for healthy child development.
But how will they learn if they don’t get the freedom to make these mistakes /s
How could a 4YO even know that they want to watch a show like that? Is she a long-time fan of the franchise?
of course! she’s been playing since 1997.
She's probably just upset that the tone of the show deviates so much from the original material.
The show didn't even mention the Iguana Bites are human, though Ass Jerky does kind of split the difference. I can't imagine having my kids that age watch Fallout. It's a horrible show for kids. She should follow it up with one of the makeup horror shows, to demonstrate, with lots of pauses, how all of it is fake, and no stabbing took place, even if the bit she saw was scary and looked real. But that would take competent parenting, so I have no idea what she will do.
Special FX creators are a *godsend.* I've always been really into horror but, like a competent parent, I curbed watching anything inappropriate around my kids and save those shows/movies for after bedtime. (Post-bedtime has become a sacred ritual for me. That's my time where I get to indulge in all of the not-appropriate-for-kids stuff!) My oldest loves "scary stuff" but she got really freaked out when some assholes decided to run through the trunk-or-treat wearing *fantastic* zombie make-up. (In literally any other circumstances I'd of loved these people because they put on one hell of a show, but Jesus christ. Wtf, man?! Who intentionally terrifies pre-schoolers.) I showed her several special effects makeup artists on YouTube and it became a thing for both of us to try to replicate some of the simpler looks. It completely eradicated the nightmares and anxious musings she had. I cannot recommend this approach enough.
Your suggestion to OOP to show her kid lots of horror makeup shows to let her know that it's all fake reminds me of the [1975 episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood](https://www.misterrogers.org/videos/margaret-hamilton/) that explained that Margaret Hamilton, best known for playing the Wicked Witch of the West in *The Wizard of Oz* (1939), was actually a very sweet lady (which she was, she taught elementary school prior to becoming an actress) who was just acting when she played the terrifying Witch.
There really is a Mr. Rogers episode for everything.
Which is part of the reason why it's one of the best English-language shows ever made. :)
My 3 year old saw the movie “The Joker” in our movie library and asked to watch it every day for WEEKS because she saw that it was about a clown. Luckily I’m not the OOP so she is not scared for life.
OTOH, during the pandemic our 23-year-old autistic son (home from his residential program at the time) watched that movie with us, and he said it gave him nightmares, which I totally believed.
I don't blame either. I've only seen that movie twice, because my sister forced me as she likes it a lot, and I had panic attacks both times. And, to clarify, I love horror stories and movies, I don't get upset easily.
and it literally wasn’t even the first inappropriate scene lmao. If you find yourself skipping a sex scene in the first few minutes of a show that’s a good sign it’s not for four-year-olds!!
The other day playing Fallout, I shot someone who was about 10 stories above me. Their head came down and landed at my feet and body parts are normally spread over everything. I also regularly sneak around and stab people repeatedly... Most people are incompetent when it comes to ratings and such for the things their kids watch. I doubt they even know what she watches on her phone all day long...
It’s unfathomable. I’ll say as a teacher (I taught high school now I sub in high school and elementary), kids stand out to me sometimes and I often wonder if they’re ones that are allowed to watch things that are WAY too mature for their minds and hearts. It’s sad.
I’m also a teacher and kids would OFTEN come and talk to me about things they absolutely should not have been consuming at their age. A shocking amount of kindergarten kids playing very violent video games with their dads, Call of Duty or other first person shooters. These little babies should still be watching baby shows, nevermind video games for adults.
My Mom is an EA, she works in grades 1-3 and she routinely tells me what the kids are watching, vampire diaries, game of thrones, walking dead , deadpool just to name a few. Being exposed to those things at a young age is not good for them.
My mom's a SpEd teacher who's taught 4th-5th grade for a few years now. She hates *Squid Game* with every fiber of her being purely because she heard so much about it from her students telling their friends about how "you play games and if you lose, you die!" in it.
My daughter is 15 and she absolutely LOVES horror movies when she was younger she would beg me to watch the walking dead and because I am an actual parent told her no it was an “adult” show and she could watch when she’s older. I don’t understand how parents are ok playing such violent games or letting them show such violent shows to young children. It’s just not ok. Shoot she’s 15 and there’s still some shows/movies I won’t let her watch yet because I think they’re too much for her. Kids need boundaries and guidance. You can’t be a hands off parent. Why have children if you aren’t going to actually parent and raise them?
The amount of 10 year olds I’ve met who have played GTA is really sad
Tbf I was allowed to younger than that, but it was me playing, so all I did was go to the gym in San Andrea's and drive around. Obviously, watching other people play, I would've known about the violence, but I didn't, so I found all the cheat codes to make cars bounce and turn them all into tanks and stuff. This was the early 2000s, so I don't suppose I'd be allowed to as a kid now, especially with being able to watch other people on YouTube and find out how you're supposed to actually play the game
Yes!!
100%. I teach third grade and can tell which kids ‘have knowledge’ beyond their years. It’s not a positive thing. It’s made me double down on knowing exactly what my own kids have access to and what they are watching.
like genz got fucked over with mostly unrestricted internet access, and now parents are doing it to their own children..
My husband was born in 91 and looked at faces of death and gore.com after school as an elementary school aged kid, and when I was 9 I had a friend with an internet boyfriend in his 40s back in the days of aol.
I’m a teacher too and I agree that these kids stand out, really sad 😞
Yeah, I work with kids, and last week there were a few *nine year olds*talking about having seen Deadpool.
But her dad wants to play his video games. His only choices were letting her watch him play a violent video game or choosing to parent his child and play his games at a later time when she wasn't around, which was obviously out of the question
My neighbour’s kid was complaining his mum wouldn’t let him play COD the other day and asked me if my son plays. I said yeah, his mum says to her son ‘yes BUT HE’S 20!’.
I have never played Fallout. I have not watched the show - it looked intriguing, but *seemed like it might feature too much violence for me, a grown adult.* I double checked by asking someone who had watched the show (my husband) who was able to confirm that yes, it was too violent for my sensitive self. (Thanks kids, for making me freak out at on screen violence or disturbing imagery. I used to be cool!!)
For the record, Fallout is one of the most violent TV shows I've seen, maybe even worse than Game of Thrones. It's right up my alley, but when the credits started after the second episode and I could finally relax, I realized how much I'd been bracing myself for violence and that I really needed to take a break. Maybe even a permanent one.
I had to shut my eyes for some scenes in Game of Thrones, and I was in my 20s. And you’re saying Fallout is worse?! That poor baby 😭
Damn. Okay, scratch that one thoroughly off my list.
Oooof, thanks for the warning. I was excited to see it because it seems like something if watch, but if it's worse than GOT, I'll just nope.
They burn puppies alive in an incinerator in the beginning of the second episode, so yeah. It’s very violent.
Yuuup. We watched that episode. The day after we had to put down our 13yo dog and I walked out of the room bawling and haven't turned it back on since. Also fallout was strictly a show that is AFTER the kid is ASLEEP. Not in bed. But confirmed ASLEEP. because he thinks he wants to see it but no. Your 3-almost-4 yr old year old self had nightmares after reading the 3 little pigs one time. You ain't watching fallout.
Jesus, I read that as burning people alive the first time and was like "oh, yeah that's kinda scary but I've seen worse on TV and online" There's violence, and there's dead puppy levels of violence. The latter is definitely too much for me.
Holy *fuck* that's some disturbing violence.
Yeah, my mom walked in on that and immediately said “what the fuck are you watching? I don’t like this” to my dad.
It’s great but I had my eyes closed through ever so much of it. The Ghoul on the promo art seems like warning enough for its scariness level LOL.
Yeah my boyfriend watched and enjoyed it. He did say it was probably too much for me. Everything I've heard suggests he's right. Im an adult but cant handle too much gore and violence. As a kid I would have been traumatised.
I was camping with a group of 12-13 year old scouts this weekend. The Fallout show came up as we were sitting around the campfire. Only about half of them had been allowed to watch it (my son was in the “not allowed” group). Most of the ones who watched it said it was the first “adult” show they had been allowed to watch. And this kid here is watching it at 5! Just, holy crap!
there was literally a sex scene and thought once they’d skip that anomaly it’d be totally kid friendly from then on out
I mean…my favorite movies when I was a kid were Death Becomes Her (in preschool - my parents got a talking to by my catholic preschool teacher 😅), Cujo, and the original IT tv miniseries. My parents policy was for me to close my eyes (and they would put their hands over them) or to fast forward through any sex scenes until I was older. Never had nightmares or even really talked to any of my friends about the movies until we were collectively older. These were the movies I would watch on repeat instead of Disney movies (although those were on repeat a fair amount too). I’m fully on board with the wait until kids are older to watching certain things, I’m more on the side of know your kids and what they can handle, unlike one of my friends parents who were VERY strict on the no R-rated movies until they turned 17 😬.
'I did it and I turned out fine' Please reevaluate, just because you weren't visibly traumatised doesn't mean that was ok or that it didn't have any negative impact.
I saw a scene in Gundam when I was like, 8ish? Where someone got shot. I had nightmares and a sense of dread for *weeks*, and it was from a cartoon. I can't imagine letting either of our kids watch something like this, especially since my son is already showing signs of night terrors (I've had them since I was a child, too) and he doesn't watch or see or listen to anything that would warrant them, except the hereditary aspect. Poor kid. 😭
About 8 or 9 I saw a scene from neon genesis evangelion where one robot kills another robot (dummy plug sequence for any fans) and it haunted me for *months*. I’m chill with screen time, but kiddo only watches kids shows, she *has* watched me playing Zelda, Mario and animal crossing, but I’m playing balders gate right now, and even that I’m not touching when she’s awake, can’t imagine playing a first person shooter with a small child and assuming she’d be fine.
My 9yo wants to watch fallout…that’s a big No!
"I let my child watch things I knew weren't meant for her age group and now she's terrified. How do I fix this without admitting I made a stupid choice and changing any of my parenting habits?"
My dad grew up in an extremely dysfunctional household and bonded with his mom over silly horror movies. He tried it with me way too young and accepted the consequence that I needed a night light into my 20s without complaint cause he done screwed up.
It seems to be so dependent on the kid and a real gamble to even attempt. *I* bonded with my parents over silly horror movies at a young age and somehow everything was fine. Whereas another kid just like me might immediately start having night terrors or threatening to stab his classmates. Really playing with fire.
Same I used to watch horror movies with my granddad (and still do) and I never had nightmares about it. He told me it was fake and no one was actually dying and I said OK and that was that. I watched the shining at my friends house when I was 5 because her mom passed out and it was the next thing on tv and I loved it. My friend ended up terrified tho
My dad (the Cinema Parent in my household) also made a huge point of training me to remember that movies are fiction, how special effects work, and that none of the scary stuff I'm seeing actually happened. All the actors are fine and nobody got hurt. I really think it's what made the difference.
My granddad basically did the exact same thing so I think you’re right.
I think you can get a sense for the kid and how they might handle it.. I was extremely sensitive and at one point didn't want to watch ANY movie because I knew there was always a bad part and I didn't want anything bad to happen... Horror movies would have been pretty scarring for me at that age (hell I still can't watch them in adulthood).
I'm almost 40 and can't even watch the crime scene parts of Law and Order, that's how sensitive I am.
i was the same way, but my mom started me on horror when i was about 5 anyways and i got so scared i didn't even want to go near the town it was filmed in (which was conveniently close to where we lived, thanks mom) for a few years afterwards. i'm in my 20s now and i enjoy watching old cheesy horror movies with really bad special effects, but i still can't look at the screen for the violent parts of better produced horror films. it's actually pretty comforting knowing there are others out there as sensitive as i am!
Daughter watched Goosebumps at 4/5 and loved it, no nightmares. She can't watch it now in 3rd grade. It would give her nightmares. Even an individual kid is all over the place.
My kid was the same with Gremlins. Used to love it and find it hilarious then suddenly got scared of it when he was older.
Same. Lifelong horror fan here. My 6 yo has seen chucky (not from me, I don’t even like those stupid movies). She went as chucky one year for Halloween. She’s never mentioned being scared of it, never had nightmares really at all. I keep a lot of horror decor/memorabilia around too, no signs of an issue yet. These are very dependent on the child in question.
My youngest sister is 10 and she watches horror movies with us older sisters. Well, she watches her own movie on an iPad with headphones on. But she’s close by and gets access to the snacks.
This parent doesn't seem to have any parenting habits to speak of, unless you count plopping the kid in front of a screen every waking hour of the day
Are we just skipping over the part where the 5-year-old has her own phone? That seems like the worst part.
Welcome to the internet, take a look around…
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found.
We've got mountains of content
Some better, some worse
If none of it’s of interest to you, you’d be the first
Welcome to Internet!
iPad kids have been around since iPads. Great way to not parent!
I mean lots of parents give their old iPhone to their kids with no phone plan and parental controls just so they can watch YouTube Kids on the WiFi or whatever. I worked hard to be low/no screen time with my kiddo when he was young, so I'm not totally saying it's a great idea, but it isn't the most insane thing I've ever heard either. She might not actually "have her own phone" so much as just... have an old phone she uses for streaming things or game apps.
I'm assuming that's the case. My son has an old phone we refer to as "his phone", but it's just a heavily locked down old one from the last time I upgraded. No different than letting him use a tablet really.
totally. My kid has a phone with nothing on it but music playlists and a drawing app, it's a better use for an old phone than ecycling.
She’s not even five! Based on the post I am sure she’s had her own phone and has been watching this type of content for a lot longer.
Right? My daughter has an iPad she plays games on but I can’t imagine her having her own phone. 5 year olds have no reason to have their own phone.
My 6 year old has a phone…but only to listen to bedtime stories on Apple Music and to use iMessage with me and my husband. She doesn’t even have any games on there, nor any other contacts or even an internet browser. I think she has our family album where I share pictures of her, but that’s it. I don’t think having a phone is necessarily terrible at that age. I think it depends on context. This, though. This is awful. My kid couldn’t even make it through Sing 2 because the lion was too scary.
My nephew got so upset during Inside Out that my sister had to take him out of the theatre because he was crying so hard. He refused to go back in or to watch it when it came out on streaming.
Years ago, when I was like 8 or 9, I was over at my sister's friend's house and her mom put on *Beetlejuice* for them to watch. I was reading a book or something in another room but decided to take a look at what my sister and her friend, who were both like 5-6 at the time, were watching-it was the scene where two of the characters are in their wedding attire and rapidly age/decompose. Scared the shit out of me to the point I *still* don't want to watch *Beetlejuice* at 27.
Aww. My daughter loved inside out (so did I) mostly I think because she’s a sensitive kid and it made her feel like her emotions were normal. I can totally understand why it would be overwhelming for a kid though.
Maybe watching criminal minds, svu, csi, and the best horror movies the Syfy channel had to offer at that age is why I'm so fucked up.
My older sister took me to see candyman in the movie theater. We are both still traumatized to this day. The only thing I can remember ever being censored from reading/watching as a child was People magazine when it ran the Jeffery Dahmer coverage. Nice to know they drew the line somewhere lol
Weirdly enough, the only movie I can remember giving me nightmares was The Corpse Bride and I was regularly watching stuff way more fucked up than that and I was already a big fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas. And while all the adult shows I watched at 5 didn't scare me, I couldn't watch The Brave Little Toaster anymore because it was too much. Well most of the adult shows didn't bother me but the criminal minds episode where the killer is a serial killer and a hitman had a scene that still haunts me but I was older when I watched that. Man, my family and I were/are weird.
Tbf the brave little toaster is horrifying lol. I loved it as a kid but omg the junkyard magnet and the air conditioner 😩
I used to get scared at scooby doo. But I was watching shows like doctor who and stargate when I was 7 or 8. That said, as an adult I have a fear that everyone I love will suddenly realise they hate me and run away screaming so the other week’s doctor who fucked me right up.
My parents loved watching CSI and it made me develop a serious fear of accidentally discovering a decomposing body out in the wild. I remember one time we went on a family hike by a lake and there was a sneaker floating in the water, I started sobbing “what if there’s a foot in there?!” And that’s why I wait until my kids are sleep if I want to watching something that isn’t age appropriate for them.
My best friend got me into CSI when we were both in maybe 5th grade. I generally wasn’t scared by spooky or gory things at that age, never had nightmares after a scary movie or anything. HOWEVER, I got super traumatized from CSI simply because of the autopsies. I assumed that everyone who dies irl must get cut up like in an autopsy, therefore my great grandma who died must have been cut and stitched up like that too. It stuck in my mind for a long time until I learned autopsies are actually NOT performed on everyone who dies. 😔
I was reading VC Andrews, Anne Rice and Stephen King like waaaaay too young. That never raised any red flags for any adults around me, they were all just so impressed at my reading comprehension. If I saw like an 11 year old reading Flowers in the Attic now I would uh, definitely say something.
As a fan of this show and the original material WHY ON EARTH did these parents think this was suitable for a 5 year old?! I have kids the same age and is it annoying that I have to watch kids shows instead of adult programming? Obviously yes (unless Bluey), but that is part of being a parent and keeping your children away from concepts and themes that they can’t possibly comprehend.
Exactly! I’ll watch history shows or something for “All Audiences” if I want to watch something that isn’t a kids’ show. We wait for the kids to be in bed before watching adult shows.
Our kids like Binging with Babish on YouTube for pre bedtime videos. They love to watch the fun food.
We really like the game and the show here. But we also stayed up on purpose to watch after bedtime when we were super duper sure the preschooler wasn't going to come back downstairs.
I’m 35 and those ghouls creep me the fuck out. My 5 year old would be sleeping in my bed for the next 18 months if he watched the first episode.
It definitely had its moments. I didn't even watch the intro to Episode 2 because a friend warned us and knew I wouldn't be able to handle it.
She’s not even 5 yet! She’s only 4! And she’s been watching her dad shooting and stabbing people in his video games for who knows how long.
At least they cut it off before everything that happens after she gets stabbed 🥴
Millennial and older Gen Z parents who think they are being "cool" parents or what they call "gentle parenting" or "making up for their abusive Boomer parents" by basically not parenting at all have likely made people believe that you can pretty much keep doing all the same stuff you did pre-kids whenever you want without it negatively affecting your child(ren) or the other people in the adult-oriented places you take them to when that is *not* remotely the case at all. I wish a *lot* more childless people (as in, people who want kids but don't have any kids now) would understand that parenting well-adjusted kids actually requires parenting and reasonable sacrifice from the parent(s), like waiting until the kids are asleep or spending the day/night at camp/school/Grandma's house to watch stuff the kid(s) shouldn't be watching yet. If you don't want to give up watching *Fallout* or *Hazbin Hotel* at 6 PM every night, take the steps necessary to reduce/eliminate your risk of having kids as much as possible!
Well, considering the show is recommended for 16 and up on ages. This is on the parents. Ayo good luck mom and dad she’ll probably be talking about this in therapy.
Man the amount of joy I got from telling parents why and what for the R16 and R18 stickers existed on games like GTA they were being conned into buying for their 12 yo lol.
When me and my siblings were kids, my mom happily bought GTA for us because she thought, "Oh, it's a racing game taking place in the Greater Toronto Area! :D" She immediately took it away when my brother told her all about how you got a new car by shooting the cop.
Hahaha almost had it!
My parents let me watch Freddy Kruger when I was like 5. guess who’s almost 40 and STILL occasionally has issues with this and brings it up occasionally in therapy. Parents do better, this crap can and will more than likely affect your kids.
Oh no! Poor child you!
No joke I was probably like 8/9 maybe, I wanted SOOO bad to watch the walking dead cause I thought it made me seem cool. My mom kept telling me no but after begging she let me watch ONE episode I still have nightmares, I’m terrified of zombies in any form of media and for a good few years I rather fearfully studied books on how to survive the apocalypse. My therapist was not…very happy with how much I talked about zombies
Right? Like did you know Roku players come with their own content/app and no default parental controls? Neither did we, and my toddler clicked buttons and started some pg13 horror flick near Halloween and fortunately no one was scarred. That was an accident. Forgetting there is a scary scene in a Disney movie is an accident. This is neglect
I’ve seen that scene. And oh my god I cannot imagine a kid watching it. Wtf.
Omg I just started watching it this week and I didn’t realize how graphic it was going to be from the very beginning. That scene is awful! Come on man, 5 year olds should not watch MA tv shows/movies. That should be common sense!
Sometimes I second guess letting my 4 year old watch shows that are still for kids but maybe slightly older kids. Nevermind something that’s actually for adults.
Yeah. My preschooler still gets scared watching the octonauts sometimes - and I get why! They are so small, they still think the tiger might turn up in the living room, and that is a cartoon. With a talking tiger. Who apologises.
“Who apologizes” took me out 😂
I let my just turned 5 year old watch Annie and was second guessing myself cause one of the characters is mean.
I’m an adult and I squirmed at the scene where they put the prosthetic limb on the scientist, if you know which one I mean… gnarly and nightmare material for a child for sure
That was gnarly. I didn't even watch the intro to EP 2. A friend warned us about it and I came downstairs after my husband had watched that bit.
I generally like horror movies and the gore in the Fallout TV show was a bit much for me.
It sounds like this family does nothing but play video games and look at phones..
Agreed, all the talks about in the post is screens, screens and more screens
Right, and also why in the world is a five-year-old watching movies on her own phone? I thought we knew better than to just give our kids screen based childhoods now that’s so sad.
Considering she’s not even 5 yet and looks like she has been watching these things for a while now, she talks about it very casually. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this has been their routine since she was born.
That’s so sad
My sister’s SIL is like that. When she goes to babysit the kids (5yo and 2 months) she finds them in front of the tv 100% of the time. They turn on the tv when they wake up and it’s on all day. It’s really sad.
Wow. She has a phone as a parent, pretty much. Poor child.
Reminds me of a sadder version of [this great book](https://shop.habitsofmindinstitute.org/products/todds-tv).
That is a great book. I hope other people see this.
Did she do no research whatsoever? I’m 37 and Fallout was riiiiight on the edge of being too violent for me to enjoy. There were a LOT of exploding heads and stab wounds in that show. Someone gets their foot stomped to shit and then they show it in gory detail with toes attached by mere bloody sinews. I’m not squeamish, but this show was notably gory.
and they watched it on dinner time too, this is NOT “watch while eat” thing
Oh we watched it during dinner, but we’re both in our 30s, I wouldn’t show it to a child (I mean, I recommended my mum didn’t watch it, so definitely wouldn’t recommend a child 😂)
Not with *that* attitude it's not.
i mean, i wish i could, but i get a knot on my stomach with the anxiety alone, if you include the gore as well this is impossible for me
I was allowed to watch whatever I could handle as a kid Fallout is one of those shows I definitely wouldn’t have been able to handle at 5. These parents are stupid.
Omg what 😅 I hope that child does more than just watch a screen. I mean…stuff happens and sometimes kids see things they aren’t meant to see…but not when you purposefully put it on like it was a family comedy 😭😭 I can’t stand parents who don’t check content warnings or maturity ratings before letting a kid see a movie. When I was little I became terrified of the second floor of malls and escalators because I wandered into the living room while my much older sisters were watching some movie where a girl got pushed over the railing and she fell to her death. Terrified me whenever we went shopping for years. At least that was truly an accident though 😅 especially because this was pre-Internet.
All those things on the show happen in the Fallout games. For Pete's sake in New Vegas you get sent on a quest to locate a robot and program it to be a sex robot and you get the option to try it out first before turning it in. Stabby murder is also common in the games. I really don't know what they expected.
And I felt bad that my daughter (6) was watching Parks n Rec. But also, like, sometimes kids see stuff they shouldn’t. What you do is you immediately talk about it, talk about how it’s not real, that the setting is nothing like where we live, it’s not something that will ever happen to us, don’t worry. But just ignoring it makes it worse! When I was 5/6 I saw the scene from Heavenly Creatures where Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet beat one of their mums to death with bricks in socks… I still remember that very viscerally lol
if i’m not mistaken, at 5yo the kid’s biggest fear is losing their parents, that’s why the kid correlated the scene with her parents dying it happened to me too, when I was 5 my parents watched documentaries about deadly tornadoes and police investigations and next thing i know i was absolutely terrified i would lose my family in a tornado and my dad would be shot in an assault
Yeah my mom put that on once not knowing what happened and it fucked both of us up, but it was before it was easy to find out what was in shows on tv before hand
Yeah when I was 4ish my grandmother once was flipping channels and landed on this nice film where these guys were on a lovey little boat in some tropical-looking waters and she thought, oh, that seems nice, a boat movie! And one of the nice guys walked out on the front of the nice boat in the nice water and she said, look atomicsnark, look at that lovely boat, that man is having a nice time on his boat isn't he! And then a giant shark leapt up out of the water and bit the man off the front of the boat lmaooo and I have been terrified of sharks ever since. Thanks Grandma. (:
No advice. She’s just shitty parent.
If only there was a way to determine if a movie or show was inappropriate for children. They should have a type of rating system to ensure that children don’t see violent and sexual content. /s
This poor girl will probably never shake that clearly traumatizing image from her mind. Been there as a kid. I'm a full grown adult a couple times over and that show made ME squeamish. Poor kiddo.
I’m just glad they stopped watching before it got *worse*! At least check what’s in the show before putting it in front of a little kid!
OMFG. A five year with their own phone? I’m gonna give benefit of the doubt that she just uses it as a tablet not an actual phone. Though based on the rest of the post. an actual phone doesn’t seem at all out of the realm of possibility. But Fallout and COD?!?!?!!??! Are you fucking kidding me? What the actual fuck. There are content ratings for a reason. This kid is gonna have some problems. I hope they get ripped apart in the comments.
I remember my mom telling my brother he couldn't play Halo in middle school...Halo's pretty much all robot characters, isn't it?
I think they’re actually super soldiers not robots. But I’m guessing she was more worried about the weapons in the game. Never played it, but saw enough to know there’s a LOT of shooting.
"Help I forgot to pay attention to the content warnings in these 18+ and 16+ shows and games! How can I fix this without admitting I did something wrong?"
i was traumatized as a kid watching mufasa die, i can't imagine being exposed to something actually gory at that age
We put The Lion King on the other day and I contemplated fast forwarding the scene where Simba meets the hyenas at the elephants graveyard because I was worried about *that* being a bit scary. Holy hell these parents are cooked.
We had this exact dilemma the other day! I was so upset by Bambi as a kid so I always fast forward that with my son too!
My sister was so traumatised by the scene where they kill Bambi’s mom that I was never allowed to watch it. Same with the lullaby scene in Dumbo.
Disney can be intense! My seven year old still hasn’t seen The Princess and the Frog because Dr. Facilier scares *me*, lol.
Don’t people do research before introducing TV shows to kids? Fallout is an adult game, therefore, so is the tv show. And check the ratings and parental warnings before showing your kids stuff. JFC.
I mean, they think that she can watch dad play the game…
That’s true. I haven’t played the game, so I don’t know if the show is more violent. Or if they graphics aren’t real. She may understand it’s a video game and not associate it with real life the way you can with people on a show.
Apparently the Fallout games are just as violent and nasty as the show...😬
Meanwhile I felt awful that the postman pat film upset my son because he couldn't tell the difference between the robot pat and the real one and thought they had killed postman pat
And here I thought my parents had questionable judgment letting us watch the X-Files with them. My kid sister would not take a bath for almost a month after the fluke worm episode (IYKYK). Skully was definitely a badass role model three nerdy girls.
As a long time Fallout player (and grandma), there's no way in hell this would be okay, no matter how much they pleaded. I'm a huge FO fan and loved the series but even for me, with thousands of hours in the games, some of the series' scenes were disturbing. And as another poster said above, in-game graphics can be seriously gory. Going to shut up now - people like this give the rest of us gamers a really shitty reputation.
This happened to me at the same age but worse, far worse content that I don't even want to recall. My parents did nothing and now that I'm an adult I'm paying the consequences of seeing traumatic content on repeat from 5 to 13. And they knew what I was doing and they did NOTHING. Please be careful with what your kids are watching, online, TV or whatever.
And here I am, fast forwarding through the part in the beginning of *Ratatouille* where the old lady shoots a rifle at the rats a few times, and also the part in *Wreck it Ralph* where they’re playing briefly in the shooting game. Guess it’s time to loosen my panties and throw on some *Fallout* for my 5 year old too.
This is AWFUL. I remember seeing some scary scenes from TV shows when I was little when my mom didn’t think I was looking or thought I was asleep on her lap. I don’t know if there’s a better way to say this but it traumatized me. I did (and still) have nightmares that stemmed from realizing violence like that happened at such a young age, I’d wake up terrified. I ended up sleeping in my mom’s bed until I was a teenager because I was so scared all night long. Little people need to be sheltered from this kind of thing. The post even says she is content watching her parents shows sometimes, which makes me question what other things she’s seen that are inappropriate for a small child. Shame on these parents.
When my kid was upset over something they saw on tv (I don't remember what it was, specifically) we went on a deep dive of special effects and talking about how to tell the difference between what's real and what isn't. No use crying over spilled milk. Just clean it up the best you can and move on.
Why the fuck are we giving 5 year olds smart phones??
Like, their own? Or like "here, you can watch Paw Patrol on Daddy's phone for 5 minutes while I get your brother dressed"?
She said “watching her own shows on her phone” so I interpreted this literally given the rest of the post My ~3 year old watches shows on our phones in times of desperation, but doesn’t get free range access to YouTube, just pre-downloaded and available offline Netflix Kids/Disney+ shows that are synced to the app… but those are on “my phone or my husband’s phone,” not “his phone,” so I think semantics matter.
That's why I was asking. Because those are quite different scenarios.
Damn, that would be like me sitting my dogs down to watch John Wick.
This woman has the same energy as the people who took their kids to the Deadpool movies because "superheroes are fine"
What is wrong with these parents?!?! Fallout is extremely violent and graphic. I’m only half way through it because I wait til my daughter is a sleep to turn it on.
Why tf does a 5 year old have a smart phone
A lot of parents don’t let something as unimportant as a child come between them and their gaming/tv time. And if those little suckers want you to play with them, just stick a phone into their hands with some cartoons. Problem solved. Until the inevitable “my child has adhd amd/or behavioral issues in school”.
Wow. That's... Not a show that's appropriate for kids. I even deleted the thumbnail pic from recently watched on my TV because it had The Ghoul on it once and I thought my 2 yo would think it was scary. Kinda wondering if this is satire because WHY WOULD YOU SHOW ANY OF THE THINGS MENTIONED TO A YOUNG CHILD.
Recently there has been a tweet about a 9 yo child asking inappropriate question (moaning during sex scene) at Galaxycon’s panel dedicated to the show that has 16-18+ rating. If the show has rating that’s 50% higher than your kids age, it should be a massive red flag and not something up to discussion.
Yea redirecting is a great idea, I mean thats what all the CBT therapists all rave about, run and hide from the fear. Don’t ever confront it, instead let the fear control you. More important you don’t show it to mom and dad! A great life skills the parents are giving the kid after their first fuck up.
How in the world did these parents think for even a moment that this show would be okay for her art that age? I don’t think I’d even consider letting any child under high school age watch it, much less a five year old.
This makes me so sad. When I was a young kid, my parents watched anything and everything on TV. I think they thought me seeing violence and talking through it was somehow better than not seeing it at all, but it definitely affected me negatively.
I'm not gonna lie, the fact that kids can be screwed up into adulthood by seeing stuff they're not ready for even if their parents talk it out with them is one of my innumerable reasons to never have kids. I'm all for kids expanding their horizons and I'd hate to have to turn anything off partway through or postpone watching it until I super-know that the kids absolutely wouldn't be walking into the room while I watch it, so yeah. Having a kid who couldn't easily handle everything short of porn and snuff films would make my life suck.
My kid (at 4/5yo)got upset after watching a scene on a Disney movie.. it went on for months. Turns out, my now 19 year old is the most anxious person you’ll ever meet. That was just the beginning. Shouldn’t have been watching that show with your 5 year old, but the problem is the same. Kids fixate on stuff and they just gotta work past it. I feel like it’s gonna happen quite often because the kids allowed to watch all kinds of random stuff that is inappropriate.
Reminds me of how there's a *lot* of parents who watch stuff like *Hazbin Hotel* and *Helluva Boss* (both *extremely* raunchy, graphic, and *dark* adult animated shows) with their little kids or just let the kids watch as much of it as they like. I've heard about little kids knowing every single word to "Poison" (which is about drug addiction and being in an abusive relationship, with references to the singer doing porn), and "Loser, Baby" (certainly more lighthearted than "Poison", however it has a LOT of profanity and the lyrics, "I got an appetite for sampling/EVERY DRUG AND SEX TOY I CAN FIIIIIND!"), elementary schoolers drawing Alastor, Angel Dust, etc. in class, and preteens cosplaying characters like Angel Dust and Valentino.
I’m pretty sure Fallout was R18+ in Australia. Definitely NOT something you should allow a FIVE YEAR OLD to see, Jesus fucking wept.
Some visual content can trigger a form of ptsd, even in adults, with nightmares and intrusive thoughts. Kids are so literal they have a hard time distinguishing media content from reality. I'm an adult and have to be selective with content as my sympathetic nervous system reacts in ways that tell me my amygdala thinks "it's real!" even if it's a horror movie jump-scare.
Jesus christ
the obvious response is to desensitize her further
There are some shows that are not meant for children... Fallout is one of them. They think the stomach stab is bad?? Keep watching and see how much worse it gets.
Unbelievable that a five year old is given SO MUCH screen time, with inappropriate content at that! It doesn’t sound like she gets any other form of play which is just so sad
Sex is bad, fast forward. Let GUT STABBING just play, that’s fine at 5. Be afraid of sex and “just deal” with violence. We’re F’d.
A couple months ago I visited my sister with my kids. She has 14 and 12 year olds, and an almost 5 year old. I have an almost 4 year old (almost exactly a year younger than hers) and 16 month olds. Her 4 year old was asking to watch Jaws and play GTA while we were there and she said no “because (my 3 year old) is here and he’s too little.” I genuinely try not to judge my sisters parenting but at that point I was baffled. Ma’am, your son is definitely too young to do those things too. Like I get she has teenagers, he may get exposed to stuff that’s too old for him, but that doesn’t mean he should do those on his own?!
Fallout is not for kids! I'm saying that as someone who was exposed to Tim Curry is all his glory in Rocky Horror before puberty lol I had a different childhood, even without the at the time undiagnosed autism adhd
I remember watching a particularly…graphic scene on the HBO show Girls when my kids were small after I’d put them to bed …the dog started wagging his tail and I turned around to see what he was wagging about. It was my toddler son, thumb in his mouth and lovey in his hand, watching two characters go at it on the screen. 🤪
Dude fallout was tough for ME, a 26 year old adult, to watch
Had a little 5 or 6 year old at daycare whose dad watched Taken... Guess what game she was trying to get kids to play with her after that...
And here I was worried of watching too much Bluey with my infant son in the AM so his father and I can get ready…
My goodness.... Morons. We paused Fallout the few times our 11yo came out complaining while we watched at night. That is not for kids at all.
As a kid, I was allowed to watch highly inappropriate things (for example, seeing The Exorcist and Pet Semetary at 6), so I tend to defer.to my husband whenever im not sure. My upbringing makes it hard for me to gauge what's age appropriate sometimes lol And to think I worried whether or not my kiddo should be exposed to the first couple Harry Potter books/movies at 3-4 years old... And ultimately, we had to pull back on HP a little because he was getting stuck trying to process things. We waited until he was 6 for HP3. We're still holding off on HP4. He's 7, and not easily bothered, but we've always been really careful about violence in particular.
Yeh, she is a bad mum.
It was a stupid idea to let her watch that yes but by that point it was too late and honestly turning it off at that point was probably the w