To think this is wrong for an 8yr old to be asked to say in assembly?

[gingerbiscuitandacuppatea]

DD (age 8 in yr 3) is doing a UNICEF assembly soon about child labour. They are reading out some examples of children's experiences, like carrying rocks up a hill, looking after cows etc.

my DD's lines include

"She used to slap me and shout at me. One day she poured petrol over me and set it alight. I rushed to the sink and splashed water over myself so luckily I wasn't too badly burned. They gave me cream for my burns and locked me in my room."

Would you be happy about your 8 year old being given those lines? I'm not happy that she now knows about people doing something so horrible, surely children this age do not need exposing to this at school?

My mother doesn't know even now- I have never felt the need to tell her.
I expect with the Internet she would have been telling everyone I had plenty of relevant reading from the library and no interest in adult reading.

No, too graphic - too graphic for me thanks, certainly not suitable to be memorized and read out.

I used to read them on the painting table at school!

I trust my children implicitly.I know exactly what sites they go on.

Believe me with Stampey Longnose in existence browsing the news websites isn't high on their to do list.

Our school,has plastic tablecloths.

Every child is different. My dd 14 could run the Red Cross - her ability to deal with stress amazes me . My Ds 11 could live in a hobbit hole and never come out - he can't rationalise negativity at all .
Every body makes choices based on the knowledge of their child .

I wasn't exactly keen on reading the news- just pointing out that it is difficult to stop unless you are with them every minute. I was a very good, conforming, quiet and people pleasing child.

I don't think you're BU at all. I think there's an awful lot of shit in the world that an 8 year old would find difficult to process. I wouldn't let my 8 year old watch the news uncensored. Trouble is in this digital age we are overwhelmed by horrors that we can do little about. I am an activist so I do get involved but at the end of the day the shit continues.

Not being dramatic but I was exposed to a piece of information around that age that shattered my view of the world. It triggered anxiety and started horrific OCD that lasted into my 20s. Maybe something else would have triggered it further down the line anyway but the fact remains I was too sensitive at that age to process that information. There are ways of learning about abuse and tragedy without going into graphic detail.

The BBFC recommends that PG films are generally not suitable for under 8s. So Frozen would not be suitable for this class that includes 7 year olds. But a graphic description of child abuse is fine because its in an assembly? It's an interesting comparison!

I think some people are more empathetic and sensitive to these shocking images and would find them very upsetting whatever age they are. I don't need to know the details to know what happens to child workers is wrong. If you have been desensitised by the 'news as entertainment' on the main TV news shows you might well think a child needs graphic descriptions of cruelty to understand some people are bad to others. But you'd be wrong. Because let's acknowledge that it is possible to discuss the issues without focusing on the 'human interest' personalised accounts like we see nightly on the BBC1 or ITV news.

You can't hide the world from children, but no need to ram the nastiness down their throats either. Here here from me Sylvanian I totally agree that it is too young for this graphic information. I think for a child to be reading this sort of stuff they would have to be well into first year of high school, so about 12yrs (going off my own DCs). In my experience (yes of course they will all differ a bit) this is about the average age they want to start seeing what is in the news and looking at newspapers.

Sure, they could learn the gist of what UNICEF does but the lines could be modified to 'she hit me and hurt me' I thinks that plenty of information.

Giving children information has to be age appropriate or it can have a harmful effect, children will be exposed to enough nastiness in good time, let them enjoy a more worry-free childhood for goodness sake whilst they can.

I was really annoyed last week when my DD 12 yrs came home heartbroken as she had just had a graphic lesson on animal cruelty which involved very upsetting video footage. Something like this could have either waited until at least year 8 or the children could have been warned that it may upset them and at least be given the choice not to watch the film. Either way it seemed a bit insensitively handled IYAM.

So, no YANBU OP !

YANBU - it really does depend on the individual child.

'Desenitisation' is a very good point to make here - the more people/children are exposed to this sort of information the more they get desensitised to it so a child being given this info at age 8 is totally inappropriate.

What are these teachers thinking of??????

I don't let my daughter watch the news (she will be 8 in September so possibly not much younger than some of the children at this junior school assembly). I don't watch or listen the news when she's awake. I read the paper and although she would be perfectly capable of reading most of what's in it, she doesn't. Why? Because I have advised her not to because I know it would lead to months of nightmares and tears. She is intelligent and self-aware enough to know I am right, and on the odd occasions when she's accidentally come across a particularly upsetting news story it has been really tough for her, to the extent that now if she wants newspaper to put down on the table before painting she will specifically ask for the sports section (on the basis that it doesn't have upsetting things in it).

Just because she doesn't read the news or watch it doesn't mean she is ignorant - we talk about major news events as a family, often when DH and I are discussing something and she wants to know more, and I am able to pitch it at a level that will not unduly distress her. I can assure you it's not holding her back educationally, though I am not going to start bragging.

And we don't have violent computer games around (neither DH nor I would be interested), she doesn't go online unsupervised and even when she goes online it's only to a small handful of child-friendly sites, she doesn't read stuff I haven't checked for suitability and it really isn't that hard to achieve. She is perfectly happy with Roald Dahl books being the scariest thing in her world. When she's ready for more, we will move on and we will find child-friendly conduits of information, but I really can't see how I'm ever going to think that the description the OP posted is suitable for under about ten years old (minimum).

There are age appropriate levels for imagery and so on, hence films and things have age restrictions.

The petrol part is too much and they really don't need it. That's the sort of level of detail to make a desensitised person react - 8yo are not (usually) desensitised to extreme violence and they do not need this imagery given to them to get them to sit up and take notice.

When DD was in reception she started drawing really disturbing pictures at home, she said that all the children were locked away to hide but the soldiers found them and shot them all, they had learnt about it. I asked the teacher thinking maybe she had got a bible story confused or something but it turned out they were doing something about the holocaust with some older children and the reception children were somehow involved too. And it was a story about a whole load of children being found and slaughtered. She was drawing these pictures for ages and talking about it, it was too much I think. She was the youngest in the class so had just turned 4.

I don't understand the people who are saying there is no such thing as age-appropriate ways of giving information, that there is no problem with exposing them to any and all of the evils in the world in graphic detail at any age as those things happen.

Bear in mind that the BBC news will always pre-warn of words and images that are particularly likely to be upsetting to some viewers. I don't know whether they have different trigger levels for the warning depending on the time of day though.

YANBU. I would be horrified! I don't think that 8 is the age to be exposed to this type of information. Children can dwell on these issues. Time for a word with the teacher.

In reception the teacher decided to talk our our dcs about the realities of life - burglary, keep windows and doors looked as someone might break in - that led to a lot of anxiety and fear...and while children of 5 years old might experience a break in - how does it benefit my dcs by having the shit scared out of them? We speak in vague terms about things that happen around the world and closer to home, as they get older they ask more questions and want more details, I agree they need to learn about the realities of life but only when they are ready.

age appropriate information......reminds me of a convo in our car recently

"what are all those flowers there for?"
"someone died there in an accident and their family are leaving flowers in memory of them. that's very sad isn't it"
"yes"

and move on
there was no need to tell a child that the victim was a pedestrian mown down by a speeding drunk, and that another member of the family was still in critically ill in hospital

delphiniums - there are other ways of gaining good general knowledge you know. Like books for example! Or specific websites. We just don't have the news on in our house, or newspapers lying around. But my DC are not at any disadvantage because of this.

My only point is that once they can read you can't always monitor it - not when they are not with you.

I think it was too graphic in OP, but a lot depends on how it was handled.

Yes OP. Far too young to read and have to take in such graphic violence

Well, obviously delphiniums, if he's not with me. My point was in response to your:
I am surprised that some children never see the news, they must be at a huge disadvantage in General Knowledge. and It must hold you back educationally if you are clueless about what is going in in the world.

You don't have to watch the news to be "clued-up" on the world. And actually my DS is on the schools G&T list, so he can't be held back too much by me restricting access to news programmes, newspapers, etc

I have actually never found it very difficult to protect my children, now 7 and 11, from graphic and disturbing news items. Someone else several posts ago said it was impossible to protect their 3.5 yr old from the news about Madeline McCann at the time she went missing...my son was 4 then and I made sure he never heard a thing about it. We don't watch TV news while the children are up, the radio gets switched off or down low if they mention something too graphic and if the newspaper has a prominent, distressing story, I keep it out of their way. If we are out and about and there is something on the news I don't want them to see, I distract them.

The other day my dd7 asked why children might get adopted, as she had heard something about it and I said one of the reasons is that their own parents might have treated them badly and they needed to get new parents who would look after them properly. She related that to the ghastly parents in Roald Dahl's 'Matilda'. That was good enough for me and if she had been able to recite any gruesome details from real life well publicised cases of child abuse, I would have been disappointed in myself for not having shielded her from that.

It is possible to be on a G&T list with a poor general knowledge