Kidding Korner: Help! My Mom is Obsessed With True Crime…Should I be Worried?

Kidding Korner is a blog about common concerns kids have about their parents. All information is posted with permission from all parties involved. 

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Recently, my mom has become obsessed with true crime stories. I have started to grow concerned by how much it consumes her life. Every time we watch movies, she always chooses a mystery or something about death or murder. If it’s not a movie containing the gruesome, I start hearing a little snore… Like, one time we were watching a Fast and Furious movie, and when I looked over, she was asleep since “nothing exciting happened,” or “this is such a slow movie.” It annoys me so much, mainly because I’m not the biggest fan of getting scared out of my mind. 

Whenever we go somewhere or do chores like folding clothes, my mom always puts on a True Crime podcast to listen to. Even worse, she puts it on when I’m not in my room, so when I go to open the door, I either hear blood-curdling screams or something awful that I can’t unhear. I open the door, and she’s sitting there as happy as can be, living her best life. Not only that, but sometimes she forgets to put headphones on, so stories of death and murder are blaring throughout the house. So, whenever a friend comes over, they get blasted by bloodshed and gory scenes. So embarrassing!

Another thing that concerns me is that even in the car, she listens to True Crime. Since our car has a feature that connects her phone to the car‘s sound system, whenever I get in, or she picks my friend and me up from Scouts, it automatically starts to play the last thing she listened to. So, I always have a little anxiety when she picks up that when the car door opens, True Crime will be playing loudly. The thing is, it happens, A LOT! It gets worse because the car also shows the names of the podcasts. The podcast’s names aren’t just general like “Murder Mystery”, or “Who Done It?”, but titles specific to True Crime: “Crime Junkie”, “Dr. Death”, and even “Something was Wrong.”

Her behavior, when she listens to these, is worrying in itself. I mean, I don’t know what is normal, but to me, it seems weird when hearing about how the murderer did the crime, she can correct their methods and figure out how to make their murder better. I don’t know when it is too much, but this is starting to concern me. When does it cross a line and become dangerous? 

Personally, I feel that something should be done about these True Crime podcasts. They seem to be a bad influence on parents since they are so violent. There is nothing more violent than those True Crime stories, you know because these stories have really happened… So what I think we should do is that kids should have an app for their parents. We can monitor their True Crime listening, you know, like having usage limits and cut-off times, and if they go over their limits, we can take their podcasts away. Something needs to be done!