Introducing SW to the kids

Ok, the "When was the first time you saw SW" thread got me thinking off on this tangent, so I figured I'd start a separate discussion for it.

When and how did you introduce SW to a younger generation - your kids or other children in your family or circle of friends?

I got to do it right from the start.  My older nephew was born in 1995.  As soon as he was old enough to play with toys on purpose (as opposed to sticking them in his mouth), I gave him some spare Vintage SW figures I had that were missing weapons and such.  I sat him down and showed him some of the action scenes from the various films, as I knew he was too young (3 or 4 years old) to get into the story just yet, but it was enough that he could relate the figures to what he saw on screen.  I tried to give him the basic plot points, too.

A year or two later, we were watching Toy Story 2.  Near the end, there's the scene where Zurg and Buzz do their take on the end of TESB.  I wanted to see if he got the reference so I turned to him and said "Where have you heard that before?"  He said threw his hands up in disgust and said "Toy Story!"...as if to say "Right here, idiot!  Weren't you paying attention?"  Then I explained it to him.  "No, what OTHER movie did you see where the bad guy was the good guy's father?"  Then he smiled as the lightbulb turned on over his head.  "Star Wars."

Fast forward another couple of years.  He's taking karate lessons and has occasionally used his little brother as target practice.  It was my dad's birthday and one of my dad's friends who was there has a black belt.  We were talking about him taking lessons and I made another SW reference.  I told my nephew "Karate is like The Force.  Remember what Yoda told Luke?  'A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.'"  Dad's friend said "That's absolutely right."  Baby brother was safe from target practice after that.

Well my son is almost 4, and since he was born I've been drumming Star Wars into his brain. Actually while he was still inside his mothers womb I was playing the music to her belly.

Anyhow, he has just now really started to ask to watch the films. Only bits mind, lighsaber duels from Empire and Sith (he loves Luke's hand getting chopped off, and loves Anakin getting fried) and likes to watch the arena battle from Clones. He loves the arena part mainly due to me giving him his first action figures the other week. I found loads of figures that I bought a few years back and never opened. SO now he has VAder and Luke from ESB, a Clone trooper from Clones and the Reek from Clones. Which for im is a double whammy...A Star Wars creature that looks like a dinosaur...He loves dinosaurs!

So at long last he has succumb to the joys of Star Wars.

I watched star wars first when I was four.  Granted, it was ROTJ, but I sat through it all the way; and I understood it.  I don't know what the big deal is for littler kids and showing them Star Wars.  Heh, maybe I'll start my kids backwards too...

My son saw ANH on his second day home from the hospital.  I'm not even kidding about that either.  I held him in my arms and watched it.

More recently, he wanted to play with my interactive R2-D2 all on his own.  I pulled it out and turned it on and he loves it.  Then he wanted to play with my Yoda and Darth Vader bobble heads.  He loves those too and he's kind of tweaked the heads a bit.

I don't even watch Star Wars on a daily basis right now.  I have a good sized display of toys and collectables that he sees, but there's nothing to really link them to "Star Wars" to him.  He still loves them to death.

I plan on watching the HD versions with him fairly soon, but we try to limit his TV viewing to about an hour a day.  He's not even two yet, so we try to do more educational activities instead of stairing at the "boob tube".

I don't think I am going to try to "brain wash" my kids into liking Star Wars by throwing it at them everyday in hopes they will catch onto it. I have a feeling they will end up liking it on their own, if only because they have fond memories of watching it with their dad when they were kids. I think by over saturating them with SW, it only stands to make them less likely to enjoy it in the end. Sometimes less of something is more.

In fact, after reading this thread, I have decided that the novel is probably the way I will introduce my kids to SW. I just pulled it off the shelf the other day and began reading it, and am really enjoying it. I can't help but think how cool it would have been to have read the book before seeing the movie, and to imagine all this stuff in your own head for the first time. My mom always read to me when I was a kid, and I loved those moments. In fact, I am going to start reading books like the Odyssey and The Lord of the Rings to my kids while they are still in the crib (mostly just to so they can hear dad's voice). I'll probably throw SW in their too. When they get old enough that they will be able to understand the stories, I'll read them to them again (maybe I will take some time and rewrite my own abridged version of the whole OT just for the purpose of reading them to my kids, I already though of doing that for Lord of the Rings, and other classics. I could even write a more serious abridgment of the PT).

As for kids and TV lj brought up a good point about the "boob tube'. As a guy who had lived most of his adult life without owning a TV, and not missing it one bit, I think when I have kids we will have very limited TV viewing times. I don't want to isolate them from the word of TV, they will learn about it and want it eventually, hearing about it from friends or seeing it at friends houses, but I don't think I will intentionally set them down in front of it to watch anything until they are old enough to ask for it. In fact, my wife and I, who watch very little TV as it is, will probably limit our TV viewing to nap times and after bed time, so that they don't see us watching it either.