Seriously. After dinner, have the whole family gather round the television.
This might sound contradictory to everything you've read in the past. But we hope this advice will help your family start a conversation on issues that matter.
We've heard the negatives associated with television. Kids who are couch potatoes tend to shy away from sports or reading. Plus, they will likely witness more than 8,000 murders before finishing grade school.
The panicked response might be to unplug everything – the computer, the television, the DVD player. But we suggest simply changing the channel.
Who knows - you and your kid might actually learn something.
Even if you're speaking to the most rebellious of teenagers, we don't expect this to be a hard sell, especially when you've got Matt Damon, Jamie Foxx and Charlize Theron to help you.
Just throw in a social statement and you've got the recipe for movies with a message.
Movies with a message
This is exactly what Jeff Skoll had in mind when he moved to Los Angeles a few years ago to start Participant Media. Normally, the Hollywood crowd would have been more skeptical of the newcomer with the big ideas for socially-conscious blockbusters. But Skoll was no starry-eyed producer trying to find his break.
Skoll's story reads a little like a movie script. Born in Montreal and raised in Toronto, Skoll read the works of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell growing up. He was touched by their social messages and set out to become a writer who tackled the world’s issues through novels.
The whole writing thing didn't really pan out. But after going to school for electrical engineering, another project did. You may have heard of it – it's called eBay.
A decade after pumping gas in North York, Skoll retired from eBay a billionaire and again started dreaming about writing. This time though, it wasn't books. It was movies.
Page 1 of 2 - head to page 2 for movie-selecting tips for parents!
