What age is appropriate for children to learn about WW1/WW2?

[lepoppo]

Ds 8.5 watched the WW2 documentary on Netflix with me over the weekend and seems very interested, I mentioned to DP I would get him some books and things about the wars and he said he thinks he's a little bit too young, I hadn't considered this and he didn't seem affected by what we watched and I think he considered the wars to be just as in the past as the ancient Greeks for example. Is 8/9 too young to learn about such things?

Irrelevant background info:

I loved history growing up, from 12-17 I flirted between children's homes, failed attempts to be placed back with my alcoholic mother, grandparents home (who really didn't want me there!) and friends houses. I loved history but was never encouraged to do well at school and missed a lot of time off, I passed my history GCSE with an A despite all of this but left education when I was give a council flat at 17 and the reality of running a household set in. DS seems to have inherited my love of history and learning in general and I am keen to facilitate this as much as I can, when he shows a particular interest in a topic I will buy him books, collect any resources we can and find documentaries we can watch together about it, DP things I go a bit over board and I likely do. He's a bright boy, of course I think he's a genius but in reality his end of year report shows he is average in all but one subject (exceeding in maths), although I still think this is amazing considering the impact of covid etc.

Interesting. I would stay away from Goodnight Mr Tom until mid teens. Bedknobs and broomsticks is silly but possibly an age appropriate way in to talking about evacuation and the home front?

DS went to a special event about the holocaust with school in Y3, though it was billed to us as a poetry event. I wasn’t at all sure about that as given his disability he wouldn’t have fared very well himself in Nazi Germany, but I’ve no idea if they even touched on that or if he would have recognised himself in the description. I would rather it had waited til they were all a bit older.

That said, they did a term about the Titanic in Y6 and although DS sadly reported ‘lots of people died’ what he really held on to was all of the engineering-type facts about size and scale. So I’m sure it’s possible to direct your DS to the adventurous/engineering/social history parts of the war - colditz and escaping POWs, planes, ships, evacuation, dig for victory - and gloss over some of the more mature aspects for now?

We read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit in primary school and I loved it. It's still one of my favourite ever books. We learned about the potato famine and all sorts at a young age back then.

Worth remembering that at this age they are also used to using google, Alexa and other search engines. Thankfully DD1 is dyslexic and we caught her as she tried to search Auschwitz on the family computer. Even google was a bit baffled by Ozwitch!
She would have immediately stumbled into some pretty horrible images though.

Could you visit the imperial war museum in London. It's all suitable except the Holocaust gallery which is aimed at 14+ and don't admit little ones.

Also, there's nothing wrong with discussing the horrible bits of history. Children do need to know about death etc. They need to know humans are nasty.

OMG I learned about the second world war when I was about 6 or 7 because my parents watched loads of films on the telly with John Wayne storming the Japanese on Guadalcanal, or Jack Hawkins bombing the Germans. Your husband sounds a bit inclined to mollycoddle.