Parenthood

Last week, the whole family watched the movie Parenthood to celebrate Labor Day Eve.

Friends recently saw it and raved.  So when I noticed it was a a streaming video on Netflix, and remembered that the last time I watched the movie I was not a parent (in fact, I hadn't even met Scott), I thought it would be a good chance for Scott and I to laugh and commiserate.

Problem #1, the movie's rated PG-13, and we have an 11 year old.

Problem #2, what to do with kids?

With a day off the next day, they weren't going to go to bed and would float in and out of the family room anyway.  They also LOVE just about every Steve Martin movie they've seen, so they weren't going to be happy about being excluded.  We decided to include them.

Problem #3:  We knew there were going to be some gags that stretched their knowledge of adult material.

Problem #4:  There were more gags and references than we even remembered.   Our 15 and 13 year old didn't understand things, let alone our 11 year old.  Like when Steve Martin during a black-out goes searching for a flashlight in his sister's bedroom and comes out with. . . something shaped like a flashlight with a whole other very private function. . .

Problem #5:  Repeatedly, we had to stop the movie to explain what the object/saying/action/etc. meant.  To most explanations we got, "That's disgusting!  Who does that??"

Who knew that Parenthood would be such an opportunity to further our kids' sex ed?  And we got to talk about broken families and driven parents and how everyone has problems no matter how hard we try to be perfect.

So come to think about it, overall there weren't that many problems after all.