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"  By the time I returned with the popcorn, it was too late, though frankly, I&amp;#039;m not sure what I could have done anyhow. The movie theater had already shown the creepy trailer for a film we&amp;#039;re most definitely not going to see. And, for the next two nights, my son would have nightmares - because of an approved-for-all-audiences preview shown before a Rated G movie. Can&amp;#039;t a mom buy some snacks without worrying if she should be throwing her hands over her kid&amp;#039;s eyes? Granted, this is the child who doesn&amp;#039;t like the &amp;quot;Goosebumps&amp;quot; books, so his horror meter is set lower than other kids his age. But when I later watched the trailer for &amp;quot;Coraline&amp;quot;, I, too, was a little freaked out by the mom with the black buttons for eyes. Here we&amp;#039;d thought we were going to see a delightful cartoon about a mouse with big ears, and yet my son had to watch a girl get buttons and a giant needle as a gift from her parents. I asked his brother about the preview, but he didn&amp;#039;t remember much about it. So I called my neighbor to ask her son, who&amp;#039;d attended the movie with us, what he&amp;#039;d thought of it. &amp;quot;Oh yeah,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;I am so not going to see that movie! It looks totally scary.&amp;quot; His 13-year-old sister added that she&amp;#039;d read the book - at her teacher&amp;#039;s request - back in fourth grade. &amp;quot;It gave me nightmares,&amp;quot; she confessed. So I checked reviews for the book on Common Sense Media, where one 9-year-old wrote: &amp;quot;Coraline was very creepy but very good. There was some violence, including chopping rats&amp;#039; heads off and slamming someone&amp;#039;s hand in a door. But I liked it.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d have a hard time sleeping after reading that, and I&amp;#039;m almost 42. Which all makes me wonder: When did scaring the bejesus out of our children become so commonplace, so accepted? Back in the day, when the umpteenth &amp;quot;Halloween&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Friday the 13th&amp;quot; movies came out, they were Rated R, and they premiered around the scare-your-pants off holiday of Halloween. Nowadays, though, the thrillers and slasher flicks come out year-round, and some of them are Rated PG-13. And then there are the books  Over on Amazon, one mother wrote that she decided to read &amp;quot;Coraline&amp;quot; after it was assigned to her second grader in school: &amp;quot;Even as an adult, I was pretty creeped out ...and it was completely inappropriate for a second-grader,&amp;quot; She wrote. &amp;quot;I think it borders on abusive to give this book to any child younger than 10 or 11.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d venture to say that making them watch the movie trailer isn&amp;#039;t a hot idea, either. Then again, our sweet little mouse movie, rated for all ages, depicted a stadium full of rats about to gorge on a girl, and yet, no one in the crowded movie theater seemed to find this disturbing but me. So maybe my horror meter is off. Maybe everyone else has decided that nightmares and fear and creepy, frightening images are all part of life and should be shared with our children at any cost. Now that&amp;#039;s scary. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a22219/why-are-we-scaring-our-kids/>