I cannot quite remember the year, but I’m sure that I was under the age of 10, as I popped my Dirty Dancing VHS tape into the video player and spoke along with “Baby” (the main character) and sang every song. Although I still have that VHS tape in a box somewhere, I have not watched it for decades now. So, I jumped at the chance to TIVO the movie and watch it with my 9-year-old daughter. Imagine my surprise when I had to start fast-forwarding the recording through all of the overtly sexual scenes and abortion references. Luckily, I think this made the movie hard for her to follow and she quickly lost interest, declared the movie boring, and wandered away.

After this experience, I looked up what the ratings for children on this movie were and was surprised to see that Common Sense Media had rated it for a minimum age of 12-14. Common Sense is a great site that reviews movies, games, websites, books, tv, and music. I think that this is an important tool for parents to take advantage of. Instead of having to read the book or watch the movie first, you are able to get immediate ratings and information. They rate based on age appropriateness and also by various topics such as violence and scariness, consumerism, and sexy stuff.

When, I thought back to my cousins (probably as young as 6) and I watching this movie many times in a row, I'm surprised that our parents did not think twice about it. I was just not okay with my young daughter watching this movie in its entirety. I think that our kids are growing up too quickly these days. They are saturated with media from all angles and if I can shelter her a year or two more than I will do that. I do discuss all of the topics in Dirty Dancing with her, so although we have a dialogue about these adult situations, she is not watching them glorified in the movies.

So, for now we are looking to a list from The New York Times top 100 movies for children for some inspiration the next time we TIVO a movie from the past!