Letters to the Editor: Exposing a child to excessive on-screen violence is no trivial mistake

To the editor: I am delighted that columnist LZ Granderson’s son was not “screwed up” by being exposed to five hours (many of which involve gruesome killing scenes) of Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movies at age 9 (“Go ahead. Make parenting mistakes,” Dec. 13). I am also glad to see that he acknowledges that as possibly being a mistake, although the whole premise of the column is that parenting is tough and we learn from mistakes. So in some ways, we should give permission to parents to make such mistakes.

Having raised two children and now in the process of raising grandchildren, I would like to suggest that all mistakes are not equivalent. Exposing a child to on-screen, nonstop killing at an early age normalizes and trivializes such violence. While most children can be taught to overcome this, even if a very small percentage continue to see killing as a trivial act, this could risk creating dangerous developmental and societal issues down the road.

In my humble opinion, having a child watch such movies is not a tolerable mistake under any circumstance. I would further suggest that there’s no societal value in having movies with this level of violence at all.

Hagop Injeyan, Glendale