Inside: Find out how to turn the watching of a movie with your child, into a teachable moment about love, sex and relationships.
One of the easiest everyday opportunities to use for a teachable moment is to watch a movie together. Television shows and TV adds also provide a great opportunity.
As well as providing an opportunity to talk, it also provides you with an opportunity to sit down with your child and to do something that they think is fun. And as kids get older, it is an opportunity to connect and to keep the door open to ongoing conversations about life.
If you’re unsure about what to watch, Common Sense Media provide some fantastic reviews as well as possible conversation starters and ideas on what to talk about.
You can learn more in this article, about what a teachable moment is.
Watch the video below to find out how you can turn watching movies into a teachable moment.
Read the transcription
How do you turn watching movies with your family into a teachable moment? Let’s find out.
Hi, I’m Cath Hak from Sex Ed rescue. Sex Ed Rescue is a channel where we talk about love, sex, pornography, and anything sex ed related. If it’s relevant, we’ll talk about it. Today’s teachable moment is how to turn watching a movie into an opportunity to teach.
Now, I’m not sure about you, but my family watches a movie every Saturday night. I used to do some work or knitting during this time, but as the kids are getting older, I’m more aware that this is a chance to spend time with my family. It’s an opportunity for us all to get together and watch a movie. I even drag my husband along, even if the movie that the kids pick is a bit boring.
But, when we watch the movie as a family, something could happen. If I watch this movie with my kids, then I can say, ‘Oh what do you think of that? What would you do if that happened to you?’ With this movie, I can talk to my kids about so many different things.
Now, I have a twelve-year-old daughter, and I’ve noticed that she wants to watch the same shows as her friends. Before I let her, I always check the movie on Common Sense Media because you can type in the name of a show and find comments, age reviews, and important information. It saves a lot of time and you can make an informed decision easily.
After I check out the show, we sit down together and watch it. This is a great opportunity. Now, recently my daughter wanted to watch Pretty Little Liars, so I looked it up. A lot of the show’s values weren’t the same as my own, but my daughter gave me a good enough reason. While my daughter and I watched it, we sat there and pointed out all the sexualized messages we see, which I loved.
So, we looked at the fact that this one girl meets a boy and after five minutes, they’re in the bathroom making out. We even talked about sexual things, behaviours, and slang. We found so many teachable moments.
Early teenage years is a great opportunity to talk about what they see on TV. But this can come down to values. You can totally avoid topics. Depending on my mood, I might avoid certain topics, but I still find that putting on shows that may not be age-appropriate is a good idea.
At the end of Pretty Little Liars, I asked my daughter if she thought this show was good for her age group, and she even said no. She said, ‘I don’t think it is age-appropriate. It was interesting, but I didn’t understand a lot of what happened. I do want to know what happens next though.’ So, we had a chat about it.
This opens a lot of conversations. When you watch a TV program with your child, you can either sit back and watch it or talk about it. This can be as simple as saying, ‘I remember that used to happen when I was a kid. Do you think that kids do that now?’ These are good conversations.
Anyway, I hope that helps. If you’ve got any questions on this sort of stuff or even the TV shows, comment down below. I did find a great sex education book the other day that was about 60 AUD, so I only borrowed it. But it talked about different books and TV shows you can use for sex education.
But, that’s all for now.
Cheers.
