how sheltered should our children be?

[Igloofornow]

Off the back of the concentration camp thread and a few comments along the lines off, 'we are lucky to live in the west do we really need our children to know what goes on in other countries'

Is this the general consensus? Personally I think the only way to change is to educate, how long do we shelter them for?

I remember watching a programme around planning and a woman contested to a crematorium being built nearby as she didn't want to explain what the big black cars were to her 5 year old, are people really so lucky that they float through life without encountering the shit stuff?

I think it depends on the child and the context. I also think it is much easier for parents to make such a decision for their child than it is for a teacher to make for a whole class and as such teachers should always err on the side of caution a bit.

I think this is a thread about a thread?

Anyway...I think children shouldn't be sheltered forever. Other children do live or die through atrocities, hearing about it is nothing compared to what they have experienced.

It needs to be as age appropriate as possible but I don't think anyone gets over seeing the holocaust photos for the first time whether they are 9 or 13. I was about 13 and didn't sleep properly for months.

Depends on age, child and context. What you want to avoid is to produce either an adult who is ignorant and an adult who has been totally desensitized. You don't need to watch people being torn to shreds on the news at the age of 4 in order to become a caring and responsible adult. But you probably need some kind of confrontation with the harsher facts of life to make a functioning teenager. It's a grey area in between.

Life is an adventure for each and every one of us full of questions

When you ask a question as a child you should be given an answer

An answer that will make sense to you and age approriate

Each and everyone of us is here to learn so witholding information to sugarcoat is wrong imo

There's nothing wrong with letting children be children and not exposing them to the horrors and atrocities of the world until they are mature enough emotionally to handle it and have an understanding without being frightened. Everything needs to be age appropriate in schools and outside of school it is down to the parents to make the decisions as to what their child is mature enough to handle and what they aren't. RE the other thread, you can educate without showing nine year olds images of corpses.

Wasn't sure if thread about thread as I am asking generally not to a specific thread, the other one just got me thinking about it.

DS 1 is 5, I answer everything he answers honestly but try to make it age appropriate, by laying the foundations on subjects then I hope the full reality isn't such a shock and the knowledge is there for him to build on.

its not a thread about a thread, it is a discussion inspired by another thread iyswim?

I think sheltering children from everything is a surefire way to create a world of 'I'm alright Jack' isolated people.

come on! with the internet the world is soooo much smaller and you need to know how the world works to get on! you need to look to past mistakes globally to help educate. you need to recognise that what happens elsewhere affects YOU

its all global

but yy age appropriate

I was reading the concentration camp thread and I think 9 is very young to see pictures of bodies in mass graves.

I first saw a picture of a concentration camp when I was 13, and I was shocked, very angry and so very sorry for those people, which I think is the normal, reasonable response to seeing those photographs for the first time or even the hundredth time. They are that emotive. The picture I saw was of a pile of bodies, not all dead I don't think, but all thrown together for disposal anyway.

And I think that's quite a complex thing for a 9 year old to deal with. It's not about sheltering them as such, but those pictures are always going to be shocking so why not wait a few years more so that children are perhaps better able to process what they are seeing and talk it through, especially at school where a class full of students will see them together.

Some children will always be more sensitive to these things than others (or perhaps just as fair to say some children are more hardened IDK, sensitive can be seen as a negative thing to be) and as parents we know our children and what they can cope with. That's why some young children are watching 15 films at age 9 and others are still having PG films vetted before they view.

I wouldn't ever want to put a set age rating on information or education but how many parents would be happy if a 15 film was shown at school to a 9 year old?

It's a choice that is easier to make as a parent for your own child than as a teacher to a class of 20 or 30 children who all have different sensitivities.

At 9 I would expect more children in a class to not be ready to see pictures of a mass grave than I would at 13, where I think more of them would be more prepared for it, although no less shocked or appalled by the cruelty. Just more able to deal with the feelings it has given them and more able to discuss it. So in this case I don't see the harm in waiting a few more years to show the worst of what happened.

I disagree with the lady on your programme though. That's a very different thing and although she may be right about her child, they could see a hearse on any street or on TV at any time and she would still have to explain it. But at least one to one with her own child means she could approach it in the right way for her particular child.

But Kelly what about our children who are losing siblings, living in poverty, frightening illness - awful things that happen in the western world. Like my example in OP regarding not wanting a 5 year old to know what a hearse is - is that not a ridiculous level of censorship?

Honestly? I think it is lazy parenting if you cant explain to your child what a crematorium is.
I think that some parents just use the 'i dont want my child to get upset' when it is them that can not face reality and they are too lazy to explain things to dcs.

As for cases like the other thread, well our dcs can haveaccess to daily mail and to politician's bigot speeches every day which i find more scary tbh.

Children should be told the truth, in certain circumstances it should not be the whole truth.
Death is part of life we are doing our children dis-service to hide them from it.
Terrible awful things happen it is really important we all learn about and from them.

I'm with you OP on teaching the kids in school about cc,I can't actually remember a time when I didn't know tbh so I must have been drip feed info as I can't remember it being a huge shock and I was a a VERY sensitive child.

The way forward is education as you say.

How do you all approach talks like this with your dc? For example valiumredhead- how would your parents have drip fed you? The 2nd world war is not something we talk about in everyday conversation. Same goes for child abuse, animal cruelty, murders etc. Should I be telling the dc about all this? I cannot even think how I would start a conversation about this with them out of no-where? "Hey dd did you hear x was murdered last night?" when it has no impact on her life-why worry her? I'm not being flippant, I really want to know.

I myself, do not watch the news or read newspapers (i have a quick glance over the yahoo homepage for big news stories) because it is too depressing. Yes I know people are living these nightmares but me knowing about them and worrying myself about it all makes no difference to these people-theres nothing I can do.

Igloofornow Yes, that level of censorship is a bit crazy. My 4 year old has a vague understanding of death, I just don't think it's appropriate to show her harrowing images of dead bodies. There's a difference between sheltering children from everything and keeping them away from things that will traumatise them or that they don't yet have the emotional maturity to deal with.

OP, I agree with your point that children in this day and age are going through terrible things that it may not be possible to shelter them from. It's better to promote resilience that for naïve children to get a shock later in life.

Silly-it is in our everyday conversation I suppose, and I just told ds in a factual, age appropriate way. I think that's what my parents did with me. I can't remember being overly traumatised by the time I learnt about it at school. And I was terrified of father Christmas coming down the chimney I was so sensitive

I don't think children should be sheltered from very much at all, but their exposure to it should be age-appropriate and increase as their age and understanding develops.

You can deal with death and abuse in exactly the same way you would deal with the dreaded "where do babies come from?" You answer questions factually but with detail determined by the child's temperament and intellectual ability. For example, my DC were aware of the basic mechanics of how babies are reproduced from the age of 4 when they first asked. Discussions about sex and relationships came much later.

Personally, I think the demarcation between primary and secondary school is a good one to bear in mind when determining how much detail our children can handle. They grow up a lot in that first 12 months, and this is the point at which they are beginning to develop emotional resilience that is tempered by adult understanding. Prior to that reactions tend to be led a lot more by instinct.

Dahlen-yes ds knew the basics early on too.

SillyTilly my son has gone with the cubs on Remembrance Sunday to the local war memorial. That begins the process of talking about the Twentieth Century wars. We haven't yet talked of concentration camps but we have talked about Nazis as a group of nasty, if not crazy people who thought they should rule over everyone else. It will all come bit by bit.

"You answer questions factually but with detail determined by the child's temperament and intellectual ability."

What if they dont ask questions? When the April Jones case was around she must of heard about it at school and she did ask questions which I answered as best I could. I'm not sure whether I should instigate conversations with her (and then what conversations should I choose?) Its all so confusing lol.

I cannot remember my mam ever sitting down with me and talking about "stuff" like this. I learnt about the birds and the bees from a girls group I went to. Maybe thats why I am like this now? Burying my head in the sand?

I talk to her about events. For example Remembrance Sunday I used to say its to remember all the people who have died, then as she's got older started to link it to the wars etc. Same with Bonfire Night, I'll tell her about Guy Fawkes etc. Its the everyday stuff I struggle with like the Syria war and all the suffering in Iraq. Its not "in her face" so should i bring it up daily? weekly? if its not our normal topic of conversation?

Sorry to hijack the thread btw, its just one of the few things I struggle with with parenting.

Most children ask questions, though not generally directly. You may spot her raising an issue through pretend play or her dolls, for example. If you have anything you feel she might be concerned about or that you should have a chat about, my advice would be to raise it anyway; it's what I do. If children are embarrassed to talk about it, they will quite often appear as though they are not concentrating, get a bit silly or just refuse to engage. In that case, you keep it as short and simple as possible and end it by saying they can ask questions at any time. They usually do eventually. Possibly raise it again if no questions are forthcoming but you feel they are mulling it over.

Some children, like some adults, live in a little cocoon though, and external events that don't affect them directly simply don't intrude on their lives, much less worry them. April Jones will not have made an impression on a lot of children, despite being talked about at school, simply because she wasn't known personally.

You don't need to keep abreast of current affairs to bring all this up (though they can often be a useful way to introduce a topic), but yes I do feel that big issues such as sex, child abuse, stranger danger, healthy relationships etc should be discussed. Conversations don't need to be heavy. Drip feeding is an ideal way to go. For example, if my DC have done something wrong and I've over-reacted a bit, I'll talk to them about why I've over-reacted, any why that's my problem not theirs.

sillytilly my grandfather was a POW so I guess I've always known about WWII. Remembrance Day US coming up, start with why we buy poppys and see how it goes, we talk about war memorials when we go past them. Once a hearse passed I told DS to stand still till it past then told him after what it was.

My parents could be a bit head in the sand, I'd rather they hear things from me when I'm there to help them through their feelings.

Silly I agree that watching an endless round of TV news is not what I want to do myself and it's certainly not what I want my son watching.

But watching more rounded factual TV can be a great idea. I was watching the first episode of the Simon Schama programme The History of The Jews on iplayer. It was about the early history up until roman times (I saw some later which were about WW2 and I won't let him see those because I was crying..)

Anyway, he came and sat with me and was watching when there was a family conversation which referred to the persecution of Jewish people over the centuries. It was a lovely scene of a family celebration of Passover but there was tragic information conveyed. That I could discuss with my son. I wouldn't want to at this age go into more graphic detail.