Is it normal that my parents paid attention to content ratings?

I'd use the content ratings as an advisory but make my own judgement on whether I wanted my kids watching it or not. I don't want some anonymous censor having control over what my kids watch and don't watch. They're my kids. I love them more than anybody else. I decide!

I would use them for my kids (if I had any) to an extent. It would really come down to the kid's personality. If they are anything like me at a young age I would be fine with them being exposed to more mature things. I was fairly mature as a kid. I understood why things were rated the way they were and I understood to not do the things shown in them that I shouldn't be doing. But some kids are not like that. Some if you show them a game like Grand Theft Auto they will grab the nearest baseball bat and club everyone in the head and try and steal cars. Those kinds of kids definitely need to have more strick control over what they view.

Also once they get to a certain age it becomes impossible to keep them away from mature content. Whether it being the internet or friends showing them things they will be exposed to it.

My parents never monitored content ratings. We just never spoke about them. Due to this, I think content ratings are a load of bullshit and children should be exposed to the real world.

It's normal for me. I couldn't get T rated games until I was a teenager. I had to convince my mom that I only wanted to play a mod for the game (paintball) when I was 12, and I wouldn't be shooting people. I couldn't watch PG-13 movies, any kind of sexual content or language was a no no. I couldn't even watch Hey Arnold because my mom read that is is the most profane nick toon. My brother bought a "Kid Rock" CD with my dad (my dad thought it was rock for kids), only for my mom to see the parental guidance warning and made him return it.

untill i was 13, if a movie had a scene where the woman would take off her top, or someone getting naked, we would have to leave the room until the scene was over, but other than that, not really. My parents did make sure we knew that most of that stuff was bad, and we knew that stuff like stealing was wrong.

my parents were fine with me having violent video games cause they knew that we knew the difference between right and wrong and not to do that stuff for real.

one of my cousins grew up with parents that were very religious and did everything they could to shelter him from anything with even the slightest amount of violence or adult situations until he was 18. starting at 15, he took to drinking alot, gambling, smoking, and just about everything he could think of to get at them. he spent most of his time in college partying and flunked out.

my dad is not surprised at all that my cousin turned out like that.

My family did it for some things but it got to the point where I felt like I was in some sort of bubble. I was allowed to play teen rated games before I entered my teen years. My mom was okay with it but some point my grandmother "developed" a issue for it. I was never allowed to play Mature Rated games which, I feel, alienated me further from the majority of my friends.

I wasn't allowed to watch R-rated films until, I think, after I turned 16 years old. There were some exceptions like musicals but for the most part I had to have an adult watch it with me. I remember being very young and my mother would cover my eyes if even the slightest bit of nudity popped up. I was sheltered from important knowledge of how the world was and about the human body for a very long time. I saw the Nutcracker with my grandmother and my friend who came with her mother and, I think, her grandmother as well. Well, there was a part where the Prince was dancing and I noticed that in between his legs was a curiously huge spot. I had to have been around 7 or 8 years old but I had no idea what it was. I was especially confused because I noticed that the ladies didn't have to huge bulge, it was only the men! So, I innocently ask my grandmother what it was and she flipped out on me! She made me feel so bad over something that I couldn't understand would warrant such an angry reaction.

There was also I "ban" on scary films. All my friends had seen horror classics before the age of 18 and once again, I felt alienated. It took a lot of begging and pleading with my mother before she agree to let me see a horror film. She bought me Beetlejuice because she wanted to see if I could handle it. I was about 11 or no... I had to have been around 12 or 13 years old then. When my so called "friends" heard about the "Beetlejuice coming of age ceremony", I was ever so slighted ridiculed because to them there was nothing scary about that film.

Getting music with the "Parental Advisory" label was fucking difficult. In some cases my mom would have to listen to it first whereas in the case of MY Chemical Romance, I had to literally borrow a CD or two from the library then as soon as I got back to my grandparent's home I had to show her the lyrical content for approval. It took awhile but I was finally able to persuade her.

I can't remember experiencing much difficulty with books. Often times, if I found a manga or a novel that had more adult themes in it, I would be so emotionally and mentally torn over it. On one hand, I would literally panic about doing the right thing and telling my mom about the content. On the other, I would try my best to keep it to myself. It became a taboo for me and the longer I could hold off on telling, the more it would become like a dirty little secret. There was one book from the teen/young adults section that I remember getting. I believe it was a British book that was written by a woman called,"Guitar Girl". Basically, it was about this girl who formed a band with one or two of her female friends and later two boys join them. The band becomes a success and the lead singer has to learn about the "Trials of Stardom". She gets in a relationship with one of the boys, she gets drunk and tells her dick manager that she loves him and then he rejects her, her drunk female friend tells her she loves her,etc. The boy who she was seeing somehow betrays her, I think he and a few other members vote to kick her out of the group, she doesn't want to have anything to do with him again... In the end she creates her own band with one of the other girls who was in the original group. They call it "Duckie"! I managed to read it all the way but when I was about halfway through my mother informed me that she had read some of the book. *Gasp!* She was upset over some of the mature themes but she allowed me to finish reading it but only if I agreed to be more careful next time.

To some extent, I think its good for parents to decide what their kids see. However, I don't agree with them attempting to control ever aspect of their child's life. Children should be allowed to grow and make their own choices for themselves. If you keep children sheltered, it will cause problems later on. Simple and beautiful things like the human body or exposing themselves (Not nudity) to the world will become a taboo for them.

I know some who do but my parents really did not care. The only thing they did not let us watch till 14 was an adult cartoon. They let us watch everything else. They did seem slightly bothered by the fact I loved horror movies though and I was a real adrenaline junky when I was young.

I knew when I was young what I was going to be into sexually. As I came into my teen years started fantasizing about those horror movies in a sexual manner. It greatly influenced my writing, my poetry but oddly not my pictures. My art was actually very exact.

I tried to draw everything exactly what it looks like. I am a realistic artist. I guess that kind of goes with my mind set. Why I always saw people as more of a puzzle not with an overly affectionate attitude.

I don't think it matters to you now. You are now your own person. Who judges themselves by their parents?

It sounds as though your parents used the rating system as a guideline, not a law. They checked out the content first and decided for themselves if it was something they felt you could handle, so to me, they went about it exactly the right way. If I had kids, I would've probably done the same. It would also have given me a great excuse to play more games. :)

I probably would've been less diligent about it by the time my kid was 14, but I respect your parents for making informed decisions instead of just going by the ESRB label on the box or just assuming you couldn't handle certain things. Good on them for doing it right.

OP deleted my comment! And it wasn't disrespectful or negative at all.

My comment was: Mine mostly didn't after age 10 and I turned out fine.

Mine did too. I think more parents should too that way they can stop blaming the video game for little Jimmy's sudden burst of violence.