movies and kids and rating and protecting

Michael and I are sorting thru all of our DVD's and it's brought the same question to both of our minds- Which movies will we let our kids watch? We don't have kids but we talk about parenting all the time, so this wasn't that off the wall. We've talked about it for a while now and haven't come to any real conclusion. It goes back to the age old parenting dilemma of how much should you shelter your children. 

At first I thought we should use the the rating to determine what our kids watch and don't watch. Any kid can watch G, kids under 13 must have our permission to watch PG, kids under 13 cannot watch PG 13, and must be 17 to watch R. This makes it simple for us but I think that we will constantly be changing those rules because we  feel it's ok for them to watch certain movies outside the rating system and I want to be consistent with rules we give our kids, so at the end of the conversation we decided that might not be the best option.

 

I want my kids to be street smart, to have common sense about the world. I also want them to hold onto their childness as long as possible. Any parenting ideas out there on how to do this? I'm not sure where my conclusion rests, which is OK since we don't have kids yet. I'll just keep plugging away at trying to find the middle ground.