AIBU to not expect my son to be exposed to so much shit at school?

[HadenoughnowFFS]

Son is year 1.
Sick and tired of him coming home with swear words the other kids have taught him, terrorism facts the parents have allowed them to watch on the TV, hitting each other as they're allowed to at home - the list goes on.
Teacher thought it nice to create a dog and diary.
Dog comes home with you and in the diary you find something from the newspaper to stick in and write a little about.
Comes home and the previous kid has an entry about the ivory tusks of elephants being taken off and more elephants being killed to death than being born.
Surely the parent can't have deemed this appropriate for a 5 year old to write about? And the teacher has just ticked it so clearly she does.
Aibu?

Maybe the 5 year old asked why there was news about elephants having found the nice picture of a Mum and Baby in the paper and her parent explained that unfortunately some bad people in the world want to kill them for their ivory.

If your child saw such a picture and asked wouldn't you tell them the truth?

I do agree that anything like swearing, hitting etc should be nipped in the bud. However news is out there and so we have always explained what is going on in child age appropriate language and detail so that it doesn't come as a massive shock to the child when their mate says there was loads of people killed in eg. Barcelona just before they go to Spain on holiday!

My DS was 5 when my Mother died and he went to the funeral and asked questions about death and dying which I answered honestly and simply. I'm sure he talked about it at school. Was I supposed to hide the fact that his much loved Granny was no longer with us?
At the same time 9/11 happened, good luck with trying to hide that from any child then, it was all anyone talked about.

"killed to death" 😂😂😂

This isn't 5 year olds " just coming across it " as someone said - it's a parent, picking out an article for their child to write about.

Why on earth do you think that? My Y1 5 year old has developed his own interests and would have chosen his own subject to write about. Probably London Underground or trains. I can't see why a five year old wouldn't have selected their own topic.

And I salute that wee environmentalist elephant lover

Lovely. Very well put👍

I remember my son was around that age when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and his response was that when he was older he was going to be a builder so he could build all those people new homes. He probably would have written something about that. So i do think YABU.

Do 5 year olds actually read other children's entry?
I assume their handwriting is quite difficult for fellow 5 year old to decipher.

Swearing and hitting , you just tell your child it's not acceptable. If it's serious, speak to the teacher.
Other things, its up to their parents what is appropriate for their kids.

My DS was 5 when my Mother died and he went to the funeral and asked questions about death and dying which I answered honestly and simply.

Quite a few 5 year olds came to view the body at the wake when my MIL died in Ireland.

Bloody hell reading some of these comments I'm glad we picked the nice quiet prep school we did for my year 1 son

Some of you clearly have no idea what is appropriate for 5 year olds

it is possible to talk about big issues using age appropriate, calm, non emotive language.
Taling about terrorism or about elephants does not mean you scare/upset children. You can do it in an age appropriate way.

5 year olds are often interested and enthusiastic about learning about the world. They don't have to have their innocence stripped in order to learn that the amazing rainforest is in trouble and what can we d to help? It is all about presentation.

In the kindest possible way, YABU. Just be thankful your child only has to read or hear about sad or frightening events. Kids all round the world have to live through them. Don't be THAT parent who wraps their child up in cotton wool, they need to learn, with your support, that terrible things do happen.

could be worse OP. when My ds was 5 and that fucking bear came home, he insisted we wrote about my giving birth to his sister. and then he drew it.

imagine what the image of my battered kebab would have done to your child!

The consensus seems to be its ok to tell your kids about genocide before you tell them Santa isnt real.

It's not the norm. Mine knew no swear words at that age. One child in school swore was sent to HT and it was the talk if the kids.
Find a school with nicer parents is all you can do

What age should a child be writing about the ivory trade and the effect on elephants?

I'd be ok with that, actually I think the book's a really good idea.

The swearing and hitting they grow out of. If the school don't nail it by half term pop in and see the teacher.

I understand your shock if you were expecting the bear went to the park stories . . . but you have to realise that school is full of different people with different values. And although the class is mainly 5-yr-olds, some will have older siblings and that means they are exposed to different topics and behaviours.
As for the elephant poaching, that would probably have upset my DS at 5 but we would have had a chat about all the amazing people working to save the elephants and what we could do to help.
But then at 6, my DC used his holiday savings to adopt an endangered species so he's aware of environmental issues.
It's your job as a parent to help to re-frame information in an age-appropriate way not to try to censor the information others give him.

I remember my son was around that age when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and his response was that when he was older he was going to be a builder so he could build all those people new homes. He probably would have written something about that.

i think this is a really good example of how 5 year olds deal with it. They think of a solution and are then quite happy that it will be solved. They live in a world where there are happy endings and things get sorted. So in response to the elephants, they might make a poster telling people to stop killing elephants, and then they go away feeling they have helped.

one of the reasons these are such big topics to us is that we can understand that there are no easy solutions, and we get the crisis element of them. But most 5 year olds see them in much more simple terms. They also see solutions (like I will be a builder and fix it all) and then move on.

You'd hate me - I tore down my class rainforest overnight. They'd spend months developing it and I left them to find it the next morning. It was to open a topic on the destruction of rainforests - blew their minds and I have pupils that are in uni now telling me they still remember that lesson and how fantastic it was

That could have ended up as a Daily Mail sad face article. @ProfessorCat

Longines Prime exactly this!!

@TansyVioletta

I know Social media wasn't really about back then so it wasn't "shared", but I've heard of a few teachers who have done it since (one even went as far as unstuffing the toy rainforest animals and charring the paper trees!!) and it has always been successful.

I must point out the rainforest lessons weren't Year 1 though, but Year 6!

I agree OP totally ridiculous to put that in the book that comes home and is supposed to be about what the dog did in your home for his visit. As you can tell from your responses some people are unutterable twats. I would ask if the content they expect in the diary can be clarified for all parents as some seen to think its a soapbox.

One of the books ds' bought home last year to read covered poaching and ivory. I wasn't too horrified, but maybe that's just me.

There's very few good news articles in newspapers so where do you expect people to find them from. Elephants are interesting to five year olds so why not learn about the threats to them and the conservation efforts. I suspect you're not going to agree but anyone who tries to wrap their child in cotton wool is going to fail miserably

don't think your ever too young to learn about the ivory trade.a sencored version at least. I wreckon this is exactlythe feature the young dc would have picked.all they would see is an elephant? then the mum or dad probably had to go onto explain the sad story of horrible people and what they do to the lovely elephants.
swearing unfortunately some people some families swear as an everyday thing.you can teach them its not acceptable surely.
when mum and dad told me not to say a word I didn't.end of.teacher should to of course.
as hypocritical of me to say so I no because I'm a terrible swearer but id like to keep that language away from kids usage as long as possible.

I don't think the news stuff is inappropriate. Mine is 4 and just started reception and we've talked about terrorism and refugees and homelessness. You can't protect them forever from the realities of the world, but it does need to be done in an age appropriate way. Maybe the child is really passionate about elephants? Why not encourage critical thinking about the world and indulge his/her interests? It sounds like a good learning experience for others to figure out how to talk about these things as you can't avoid them forever.

The hitting and swearing and bad behaviour though isn't acceptable. But at the same time, schools can only do so much. Parents need to parent their kids and though the schools need to set appropriate boundaries and consequences for those sorts of things, they can't be at home to do it all the time unfortunately. So there will always be shitty parenting. But also a good reason to talk about good behaviour and respect and using nice language with your lo. Mine came home saying the word 'stupid' the other day (she didn't know what it meant and she didn't really use it in a mean way), but it was a good excuse to talk about what it meant and why we shouldn't say it and how it could hurt someone else, which was actually really beneficial.

It's an unusual choice for the take home dog but what's wrong with learning about the ivory trade?

Are you one of these people who doesn't tell their children where their food comes from either?

Terrorism needs to be discussed as of course children's ill pick up bits from older children and be scared if they aren't talked to.