Parent’s Guide: Brave

Jun 11, 2012 By Sharon Feliciano in film, media, parent's guide

Last night we had the chance to see Disney Pixar’s Brave as part of the Seattle International Film Festival. I sit on the SIFF Parent Committee and we were so thrilled a few months ago when SIFF programmers told us that they would be screening it a full twelve days before its release.

Brave tells the story of Scottish Princess Merida as she fights her mother’s wish to marry her off to a member of an allied clan. Obsessed with destiny, Merida turns to the supernatural to try and change hers with disastrous effect. To fix what went wrong, she must take her mother on an adventure where they learn the importance of listening and compromise.

There’s been a lot of talk about what a strong character Merida is. And indeed, seeing a princess who is not only proficient in combat arts but actively fights against being paired up with “Prince Charming” was refreshing. The only love story in the film was the one between Merida and her mother. The mother/daughter relationship was so well written and some of the aforementioned tears were the result of being reminded of my own teenage interactions with my mother. Teenagers can be cruel, parents can be angry and unyielding.

At times it was laugh out loud funny, other times it was scary, and I spent about 25 of the 90 minute running time sobbing. It had adventure, suspense, and sentimentality. It was Pixar’s doing its best at everything Pixar does best.

So…”Can I take my five year old to see Brave?” I’d say “yes”, with a few caveats. There are some scary scenes with vicious bears (there are also plenty of cute scenes with bears). Kitty was scared and grabbed my arm, but didn’t get so upset that we had to leave. There was a younger child in the theater who cried during some of the more intense scenes. There are ~~a few~~ a lot of animated bottoms shown. There is a scene involving a cleavage joke. There was a real fear at the end (even for me) that the main conflict was not going to be resolved in a tidy way. It’s pretty typically Pixar in that there is genuine suspense. I’d say it’s fine for most kids 5 and up.

Facebook now charging to show you posts.

Jun 8, 2012 By Sharon Feliciano in blog business

If you “like” Parenting Geekly on Facebook you may have noticed that you aren’t seeing as many posts from me lately. Facebook has recently changed the way that posts from your “liked” pages show up. They only show the posts to those of you that recently (or often) interact with the page by “liking” the posts, posting on the wall, etc. For Parenting Geekly that is 13 of you right now. That’s understandable, I don’t interact with most of the Facebook pages I like, but I sure do enjoy seeing them in my feed. It’s why I “liked” them in the first place. They have recently given me the option of paying per post so that you can all see the stuff you already thought you were seeing, but paying for each post isn’t really an option for me, most small businesses, other blogs, non-profits and grassroots organizations.

I believe that Facebook should make money, and I understand that as a publicly traded company they have investors to keep happy. I have paid money to advertise the blog, but paying per post is just cost prohibitive. Unfortunately it’s also going to make Facebook pointless for many small organizations.

In my day job I am PR/social media consultant (plug: you can learn more/hire me here). I specialize in helping small businesses and non-profits learn how to utilize social media. Facebook was such a great tool for them because it was a free, easy way for them to interact with their supporters and customers. My two-person dog walker client can’t afford to pay $15 each time they want their customers to see a post. I do all the social media for the Skagit Valley Festival of Family Farms, a non-profit dedicated to preserving family farms and farmland. It’s a worthy cause, and Facebook was our cost-effective way of letting people know about our event and how they can help throughout the year. We operate on a teeny-tiny budget, there’s no way we can afford to promote our posts, not even once.

I don’t usually go into a ton of “behind the scenes” stuff, but I wanted you to know why Parenting Geekly’s Facebook feed may seem a bit more quiet. I also wanted to share this article with you that explains how you can fix this in your feed. It’s a bit of a pain in the butt, but I encourage you to go through the pages you like and at least make sure you are seeing posts from non-profits/causes you support. Alternatively you can interact more with the pages you like by finding them and “liking” their most recent post or otherwise interacting with them.

Thanks to super-cool Geeky Songstress Marian Call for sharing the article on Twitter.

If you’re reading this, you should take the Parenting Geekly reader survey!

Be prepared for an emergency.

Jun 8, 2012 By Sharon Feliciano in blog business, contests, giveaway

Nate just completed his fifth grade project. He goes to an alternative school and this project has been part of the 5th grade promotion requirements since before the school was part of the school district, when it was *really* alternative. There is no structure, no guidelines, no grading rubric; the teacher told them “pick a subject and make a project”.

Nate originally wanted to do his project on wilderness survival, but figured that with the amount of time he had (and with his camping-phobic mother) he wouldn’t be able to do anything that people would want to learn about. So then it morphed into survival kits for camping trips kids his age would take – survival for kids. That was pretty narrow in scope so I suggested that he work on family emergency kits. He liked the idea and got started researching on the web and making lists.

The sites he referenced were 3days3ways.org which is a resource from the King County (where Seattle is) office of Emergency Management. He recommends this one because it has a calculator. You can plug in the number of family members you have and the number of days you’d like to be prepared for and it will give you the specific amounts of food and water you should have. When developing our family’s kit, he used the list at redcross.org for non-food emergency items like first aid items.

When he was done we were left with a pretty complete kit. Nate’s advice to the parents at the presentation night was “an imperfect kit is better than no kit”. If you have some of the stuff gather it up in a box or back pack, keep a copy of your list with you and add and item to it each time you shop. It’s also suggested that you keep at least $200 in small bills with your kit. This is easy to accumulate if you put aside a few dollars a week. Thanks to his advice, I empty all of the singles from my wallet each night and put them with the emergency supplies. It may not be the full amount that is recommended, but if there were an emergency tomorrow I’m better off than I was yesterday.

As part of the project Nate and I wrote a survey. We wanted to know who had a kit, and what types of disasters people had survived. It was really, really interesting to read the responses and they really emphasized that being prepared for an emergency is important.

The survey was more popular than we thought, and due to the large number of responses we wound up having to pay to access them. So, since I have access to that account for a month, I created a Parenting Geekly reader survey. I’d love to know what you think about the site so that I can tailor the posts to things that interest my audience the most. I’d also like to start handling my own advertising soon (to hopefully ditch the giant Google ads) and some of the demographic info I ask for will help me secure quality, independent advertisers who fit the interests of this group.

More info and a link to the survey is on the Survey! tab at the top of the site. You can also click here to get to it.

And since I’m not above bribery…two respondents will each win an Amazon gift card. Once you fill out the survey return to the Survey! page and enter using the Rafflecopter widget.