Welcome to the end of the year GEMs, we almost made it (I am of course referring to the school year rather than the actual year. The former is a source of celebration, the latter rather more depressing – ‘how old am I?’)

Naturally, end of the year activities are in full swing and that includes picking up the overpriced school yearbooks.

Casey brought hers home yesterday and through all of the “HAGS (have a great summer) and SUNY (see you next year) signatures from her posse I saw this:

Yes, in the “favorites” section of the 8th grade they chose The Hangover, as their favorite movie of the year. WHAT? The R-rated, outrageously funny and super vulgar and dirty The Hangover?

I have seen this movie three times. Between the second and third time, I had forgotten how off color the humor was. Cole was in the room with me as it was coming on and in the first three minutes or so someone dropped an F-bomb, which instantly jolted me back to reality.

“ Get out, out, OUT!” I screamed at him, scrambling for the pause button on the remote.  He sputtered “But all my friends have seen this movie.” Well that doesn’t fly in this house.

But apparently it does in some houses in my ‘hood. A girl told her mother she watched it at an overnight party at a friend’s house with the girl’s father!  Double WHAT? Wasn’t he embarrassed by the F bombs and boobs, and F bombs and penis talk and still more F bombs? Apparently not.

Look, I am no prude and I like my kids to have fun and bonus points if they do it with me. But watching an R rated movie as profane as The Hangover with a bunch of 11-year-olds (or 12 or 13 or anything under 17) is completely off the reservation! Especially if they are not my 11-year-olds!

I think it’s easy sometimes to get caught up in what everyone else is doing or we want our kids to see us as cool, or that we forget there are things they should still be shielded from. But come on, mommy, daddy, the world will strip them of their innocence soon enough; do we really need to hasten that?

But what do you think? Would you let your kids watch The Hangover? What movies are banned in your house? What are your R-rated movie rules?