Eighth Grade - Barney's Incorrect Five Second Reviews

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I found myself trying to 'parent' a couple of scenes

This was my first reaction to seeing the trailer (while seeing the Mr Rogers documentary). They also teased that conversation about technology, which blew my mind in an admittedly obvious way. Teenagers will quickly latch onto whatever features they can use to socialize and/or exclude the right group of people and considering the pace of feature rollouts and life cycles of social platforms, it's not surprising that "generations" can now be condensed down to less than a handful of years.

Thanks for reviewing this. I think I may drag my 15 and 12 year olds to the theater with me to see it.

Are either of them girls? There's a pretty serious scene, not unlike Edge of Seventeen, where she finds herself in a bad situation with a horny high school guy. It's a really important scene, so I think it would be good to see it with your kids. The whole thing is going to make for some good discussion with dad after too.

Like after seeing it, i think I'd want to really push the rule that there is no phones at the dinner table.

Really hope you see this. Both this and Won't You Be My Neighbor were outstanding.

There should definitely be no phones at the dinner table. Even more important is no phones in bedrooms over night.

We haven’t concretely decided about when to get phones yet, but we will probably hold off until at least 9th or 10th grade

When I talk to my teacher friends, they all agree that middle school is the hell hole where we are losing the battle......The stuff you hoped would happen at Jimmy Mcdougal's spring break party your junior year of high school is going down with 12-14 year olds in 100,000 latch key living rooms every day.

If you've got a 12+ boy and you give him a phone without monitoring or restrictions you've got a kid with a porn addiction. THat's why you can't get the little *%$^ out of the bathroom.

I saw it last week as well. I liked it a lot, but probably not as much as Barney. I had the same misconceptions going in, though.

Strangely, this film reminded me more of Hereditary than Leave No Trace. Don't get me wrong, they really have almost nothing in common, character or plot-wise. But they both gave me a strong sense of dread almost the entire time. What is going to happen to her? How is she going to handle this situation? Is she going to be okay? So while it was obviously a great insight into the lives of modern pre-teenagers (so many awkward situations!), it was also a great way to live vicariously as a parent (I am not a parent), as I'm sure those previously mentioned dreads go through parents' minds nearly every day.

I would definitely enforce a no phones at the dinner table rule, however she did say that it was Freeform Friday, which implied that it was an exception that night.

Mild spoiler for a nice moment--

Space Ghost wrote:

We haven’t concretely decided about when to get phones yet, but we will probably hold off until at least 9th or 10th grade.

If you could pull that off, you'd be a tougher parent than I was.

I know that kids will actually try to sneak a phone to an incommunicado friend if they lose theirs/don't get one for whatever reason. I had to 'explain' to my daughter one time that, a) no, I wasn't going to let her give a friend an old phone for whatever reason, and that b) her even asking me to help a kid end run around their parents' restrictions is way Not Cool, and her best bet would be to not ask me anything like that again if you want to keep your phone, not get grounded, etc.

Emily is 7 and she's had a 'phone' for a year already. Not my idea, but it's nice that she has a way to text me whenever she wants to talk to me. Didn't take long for her to find Pennywise on Youtube and that was it for restless nights for a month. So a bunch of restrictions got put in and now she's very gunshy about it. She chooses to go without it for a week or more sometimes, and she knows there is none of it at the dinner table. So it's okay so far. It'll obviously get tougher as friends enter the picture.

Greg, you're right that it was freedom Friday. I still think "don't by a dick to Dad" would apply. But man did I love that dad and everything he was trying to do. Heroic. Did you notice that EVERY communication from him finished with "i love you"? I adored that.

I still can't believe I saw this one day after seeing Won't You Be My Neighbor? I've seen quite a few movies this year already and these two blew everything else out of the water.

Greg, i also had that feeling of dread a bit. It's very unsettling, no? That's pretty good character development if we care that much about the progonists.

Booth, yeah I started hearing 13 years ago what was happening at junior high parties 5 years before that. I couldn't believe it. Must be even worse by now. That stuff wasn't happening at all to anyone I knew 30 years ago. This movie directly attacks those issues brilliantly.

Greg...

Barney - you're in a completely different situation and, in a lot of ways, it makes sense for your daughter to have a phone so she can stay in easy contact with you. I imagine I would want exactly that if I were in your position.

Our daughter is 6 and is already asking for a phone. Some of that is because both the wife and I have a phone and she wants to be like us. Some of that, I am sure, is that even at that age, some of her friends have phones. I just don't see an upside to it for a child -- I mean, what good can come from it? I don't even like my phone and I think that most of social media is insidious and just makes people feel bad. When is the last time you heard someone say "Wow, I really enjoyed that 40 minutes that I inadvertently spent on Facebook/Instragram/_______ ?"

My wife and I have started to try to put our phones away from 5 -- bedtime, at least. I just go put mine in the nightstand drawer. Who in the hell needs to talk to me in those hours, which should be reserved for family? Nothing is so important that it can't wait 3 hours. This whole notion that I should always be easily contacted is absurd. I am hopeful if they don't see it as a big part of our life than they won't feel compelled for it to be a big part of their life (I'm sure I'm fighting upstream, but I'm willing to engage in the battle for now).

I've also went to checking email once in the morning and once in afternoon. I am staging my quiet rebellion against instantaneous responses to things. It really is cutting into productivity on all fronts.

My niece started kindergarten last week and one of the kids has a smart phone. I got my kids burner phones for texting at 7th grade and a smart phone in 9th and that was a issue only because everyone had them years earlier. It's a struggle but one where true communication with your kids about the phones and media is required.

Thanks...this is definitly on my must watch urgently list.