"My parents dont let me watch the news": reflections on 11+ interviews I have carried out

Plenty of houses don’t listen to the radio or have terrestrial tv nowadays and just have netflix etc.

The news is always depressing - when I stopped watching it for several years (all news including websites) I felt to so much happier and didn’t feel like I missed out on anything. I only started watching the news again when the pandemic hit.

The children had a FirstNews subscription and I didn’t even read that.

I haven't watched 'the news' since about 7 or 8 years ago. Everytime I go on holiday and have actual broadcast TV, I can't believe how boring and fluffy the breakfast show is.

I got apple news and I listen to Newscast. I don't demand my children read/listen to them though.

Many don't do TV or radio anymore.

We’ve always had the news on at breakfast time so our kids have always seen it . One as a young teen is quite squeamish and does sometimes ask to turn it over now - that started during lockdown - needless to say we turn it over

Our son is 8. We watch the news most days. Some days he watches it with us, some days it bores him ridged, but he's always allowed to watch it - how else will he become prepared for the world in which he is growing up? He also watches Newsround at school and often comes home with questions. Yes, some subjects are grim, but just because he's a child doesn't mean he shouldn't understand that that IS how the world is and that's what human beings do to each other.

'first hand'

Of course! Lots of kids are academic and intelligent but perhaps not truly gifted.

I've seen it first time again and again. I'm assuming this school is looking for the latter. And maybe it's the kind of school with an ethos and environment where kids can ask lots of probing questions and are able to stray from the curriculum (which is not always possible in most schools, even the most selective)?

Wow. Only on mumsnet would 10 year olds be reading the economist and the FT for easy access news coverage 😅

But it perfectly illustrates what an urban family would be horrified for their child to witness and worry about trauma, is normality for many rural farm kids.

I think my job teaching and researching at a university, it all began with encouragement from my parents to feed my curiosity about the world.
When I was 9 no way my parents would let me watch an 18 rated film, but I watched the 6 o’clock news, before that I watched Newsround and my parents would discuss politics and world events amongst themselves all the time. My mother was a Labour voter, my father a staunch Tory, so lots of political debate about world events, this was an excellent environment to grow up in. (They always kissed and made up) but would argue about unemployment, spending on nuclear missiles, wars raging around the world, it made me very aware, and they encouraged this awareness.

Yes filter by all means, no-one wants to show for example planes going into the side of buildings, violent war scenes etc, but encourage children to take an interest in world events and ensure a wide source of news- periodicals, journals and magazines, the FT and Economist is excellent for non-sensationalised news suitable for 10 year olds about world events.

I think kids can be extremely intelligent and academic and still be utterly untouched by the news at 10 years old.

Exactly @Bitteplease

But, in all honesty, it IS a very useful filter and sorts the 'robot' kids who have been drummed into studying day/night (due to expectations, culture etc) to achieve 'high scores' but are not actually really of the intellectual level where they show natural curiosity or make unusual, out-of-the-box connections. The truly gifted invariably seek news out or go beyond the boundaries.

I have in the past worked with lots of kids and it is the one defining thing for a truly gifted, and I've interacted with a lot of highly able (but not 'truly gifted') kids and they are able to form opinions when they've been presented with something but wouldn't seek the additional info out in the same way.

Farming is different to news content anyway as the latter is packaged, sensationalised and delivered in a way to maximise emotional hooks. There are better ways to inform dc

But used as a filter for a popular selective public school that no doubt feeds Oxbridge and top Universities, asking a 10 year old to discuss a recent subject in the news is an excellent way to determine intellectual curiosity in current events.
Again, that's only because you, like the OP, have decided that a child having an opinion on the news is a marker for academic intelligence. Which in reality translates as 'this family are the right sort of family who do things how the OP thinks they should'.

A child can show their intellectual curiosity by talking about a world issue, or topic of their choice, or an issue of they feel strongly about.

@DaddyPhD
You took my quote featuring the words Africa and Haiti out of context.

My mother grew up on a farm and also witnessed all the usual farm sights, sounds, smells. Like your wife, she's also a well balanced person. That doesn't mean she got to be the person she is because she saw lambs born or piglets slaughtered or injured animals put down before age 10. Correlation isn't causation.

But used as a filter for a popular selective public school that no doubt feeds Oxbridge and top Universities, asking a 10 year old to discuss a recent subject in the news is an excellent way to determine intellectual curiosity in current events.

It could be as simple as talking about things like mental health week ( My daughters prep has a week long, age appropriate awareness on this ) Why are nurses striking and is it right to do so? Indeed why are teachers striking? All these things- a boy or girl of above intelligence should have an opinion on and should know are current events. All of them have an impact on their families lives.

I'm pretty sure this is what the OP means, not a breakdown of the dynamics of migrants drowning in the channel, or if the UK should send them to Rwanada, or human right abuses in Iran, etc

Totally agree - age appropriate reporting, yet covers most current affairs. We loved them - cancelled our subscription at 13 yrs, but lasted 4 year and will subscribe again when my youngest is old enough. Great to get them off screen too.

Not filtering the news, or being highly selective, but as OP says, werent allowed to watch the news and had no opinions/ ideas about the issues.

How anyone can defend that is beyond me
They had no opinions on the topics the OP decided a KS2 child should have an opinion on.

Not watching the news doesn't mean the children aren't exposed to any issues and are left clueless about the world beyond their front gate. All it says is that in an interview situation a child was being judged based on whether the interviewer liked the way the family does things at home, based on the interviewer valuing the news and certain topics.

Personally, I want my DC to have access to age appropriate news sources and to be aware of a range of issues in an age appropriate way, but the OP's questioning doesn't establish which children have the most academic potential.

It would have been a better question to ask the children to share about a topic or issue that they are interested in / an issue they care about. Much more open ended and much less likely to throw a child who gets content in a way that isn't 'the news'. You'd probably get more developed and thoughtful responses this way as well.

I'd be concerned if a candidate for an academic school couldn't talk about an issue or topic they are interested in. I wouldn't be concerned if a child on interview didn't perform well when asked about their thoughts about the news or certain topics that a stranger decided to ask them about in an interview situation.

This is because they are not in fact able to deal with the realities and the messiness of life

My wife grew up on a large farm, she saw pigs getting slaughtered, animals shagging, cows getting killed, injured animals getting put down, live births , dead births, she saw it all by 10. She dealt with it. She's probably one of the most level headed person I know, especially compared to many friends I know who grew up in idylic childhoods in the suburbs protected from anything harsh.

She currently works at a Eton group public school and when I showed her OP's post she completely agreed and most of her colleagues would agree a 10 year old banned from watching the news by their parents is very disturbing , and that's OP point. Not filtering the news, or being highly selective, but as OP says, werent allowed to watch the news and had no opinions/ ideas about the issues.

How anyone can defend that is beyond me

Calling the whole continent of Africa (54 hugely different countries) as endless scenes of war and political dysfunction and ingoring the endless scenes of war and political dysfunction in the West - is a pretty Western centric, colonised view.

A revolving door at no10, batshit crazy economic policies that blew a £30 billions wide hole in our economy, huge corruption during Covid, record breaking profits of gas companies while people have died of cold because they can't afford to switch on heating, and that's just in the UK! A halfwit in America nearly sparking a civil war , but dysfunction politics is a thing that happens outside the West???

But I suspect my opinion would be dismissed as part of the anti-common sense, virtue signalling, North London intellectual woke agenda, by these same people who ban the news for their children.

I stopped all live tv in our house at the beginning of covid. I no longer watch the news and neither do my children, I don’t read newspapers or follow any news outlets on social media unless they’re local and my daughter has previously told her teachers she isn’t aloud to watch the news. It is all completely miserable and anxiety inducing and I’m glad that I am sheltering my children and myself from it all, I’m a happier person for it and so are my kids. My niece needed therapy to go into public spaces after covid, if she got sick she thought she would kill her nanny who she is very close to, she’s 9 and is terrified of everything.

Children need to learn how to rationalise and process that anxiety. Shielding them from the realities of life is no way to do that.

I disagree with this. If there's any truth in it then why is there a TV watershed? Why are games and movies and other media content rated according to appropriateness for certain ages? Why not let children into strip clubs? If they're awake, why not bring them out on the town on a Saturday night? Why are there child protection services? Surely a horrible home environment promotes resilience? Mistreatment is a character builder? And teachers should be allowed to humiliate and hit students who get on their nerves too. That was once a reality of life.

The usefulness of fairy tales consists in letting children have little bite sized pieces of the good and evil aspects of life, in manageable amounts, that they can process through seeing the triumph of good, which happens in the vast majority of tales. They need the comfort of knowing there is ultimately this order in the world. This is because they are not in fact able to deal with the realities and the messiness of life. The nightly news offers no resolution or comfort or glimpse of the orderly ending children need.

We have rolling 24 hour news on (for work) on at least one tv in the house.
Kids (8 and 3) are not affected on the slightest.
However as a family we are very into current affairs and have regular discussions around news stories that all the family are involved in.
8 year old can happily chat about the complexities of climate change, wars and interest rates for example with a genuine interest. However we really invest the time to explain these things in detail to him so that he isn’t worried about anything he sees. I think this is crucial if kids are watching the news to make sure they understand as I would say it is the misunderstanding that would breed any kind of fears or sadness from watching it.

But the point of those is that they are age appropriate fiction.

It’s a rehearsal to build resilience before encountering terrible real-life things.

Similar to how a goldfish or a gerbil is safe way to learn about death before it’s granny’s turn.

(My child’s normal psychosocial development was disrupted by childhood cancer, diagnosed just before she turned 7. The psychological fall out has been intense. We can’t protect them from everything but if it’s possible to stick with age appropriate content then we really should!)

Perhaps the question was worded in a way that children wouldn’t understand.

How about if an interviewer asked ‘What big issues in the world are you interested in’ or ‘Is there something going on in the world that you think is really important’ or ‘If you were Prime Minister, what do you think would be the thing you’d most like to deal with’

What would most children say to those questions or be able to think about?

When interviewers ask these questions, it’s usually just a conversation prompt rather than a test of knowledge. Some people probably couldn’t imagine their child engaging in answering this kind of question. However, if your child is applying for an academically selective school which interviews, they’ve probably been prepped for the exam and have also prepped for an interview - that doesn’t mean tutoring necessarily, but most families will have engaged with the process and answering a question like this is something most will have thought about. So lots might not really know much about the wider world, but will have prepared something to talk about. Good interviewers phrase questions in a way 10 year olds can understand and engage with. The one about what you’d do if PM, is probably easier to engage with than a general question about the news.

Out of interest, for those not letting their children see news or other sources of info, what age would you let them look? Do you know 100% what they’re looking at online?