When do you think Harry Potter would be appropriate to watch with a child? When they are old enough to read the books? I've never seen any of the movies, though I've read some of the books. Obviously there are some scary parts! My almost 4 year old doesn't typically get scared by movies, so I'm wondering when he could/should watch Harry Potter series.
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My 3.5 year old will watch parts of the movies with me. He isn't easily scared by movies but it doesn't keep his attention very long.
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@lilyann: Mine will sit for a whole movie! He loves movies!!
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@winniebee: Mine loves movies too but mainly cartoon ones. He has seen a few in the theater and sat still the whole time! He will watch just about anything at night though...I may or may not have let him watch an episode of the bachelor with me
He will do anything to stay up late, ha.
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@lilyann: LOL. Our son refers to Bachelor and other adult shows as "Mommy shows"
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We just finished reading Harry Potter 1 last night with my 5 yo. For my son, I think the book was a little too advanced for him. It's definitely the most complex book we've read so far, and I think we generally read a lot of books well beyond his age. While he definitely understood what was going on, some of the details were lost on him. That said, he wanted to start book 2 tonight, so we did.
As for the films, my son is a huge chicken and we won't be watching the HP movies anytime soon (he has never seen any Disney movies since even the opening scenes are scary to him).
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I think it really depends on the kid. My step son started watching them around 4 or 5.
Eta: I agree that 7 or 8 is a more appropriate age for the later movies. We didn't watch the whole series with my stepson until he was 8, but he'd seen the first movie with his mom several years before.
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Around 7 or 8? I thought it had some quite intense spots and all of the HP movies move at a really fast clip to get as much of the books' details in as possible, so I feel like they're probably harder than average for a child to follow if they aren't already extremely familiar with the plot and characters (and there are a LOT of characters in HP!). Also, HP is one situation where I am going to insist that LO read the book first.
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The later movies are rated PG-13, so I would take that into account before I started watching the series.
@honeybear: 7 or 8 for the first couple movies sounds right to me.
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My 2.5 year old DD walked in on me watching the first one and sat down to watch it with me. I was super surprised that she loved it. She asks me if any cats we see are "Fessor Agonagall" and she likes to pick up sticks and say "Spittyhummus! I taked your wand away!". It's super adorable even if I'm not totally sure she gets the plot. We do skip the scary scenes.
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7-8? I really don't think they would keep my lo's interest much before that.
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I think what makes it hard is the age for the first movie is way younger than the last. I think once you start they'd easily want to watch them all which could be hard to say no too. So I might try to start even older so they're old enough for them all. Maybe 9 or 10??
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The later movies get intense and there are several deaths of beloved characters. I honestly wouldn't probably want my LO to start the series until she was closer to 10. The early ones are much more reasonable but I wouldn't want to count on a kid being content only watching part of the series if they knew that more movies existed.
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I agree that I wouldn't let him watch the later ones until older, but I think the earlier ones are good stand alone movies and he can watch them whenever.
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When I sold the books as a bookseller people always said to start the first book at age 8 and then read one per year and you will stay at a developmentally appropriate level. For the movies I would agree with others and say that you kind of need to err on the older end because the later movies are a lot darker than the earlier ones.
He will do anything to stay up late, ha.
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