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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think 6 is too young to watch 3 hours of the world trade center being bombed and collapsing?

63 replies

InkedGreen · 15/09/2019 08:50

Ex DH played the live news coverage (god knows where he picked up a recording of this) of the planes bombing the wtc to DD aged 6. She now doesn't want to go away for Christmas.

Dimwit ex says it's important to know, but she's way too young right?

OP posts:
PrincessHoneysuckle · 15/09/2019 09:47

Jesus,I've had dh 5 asking if robbers are real lately and didn't know what to say for the best.I certainly wouldn't be showing 9/11 stuff to him.

PrincessHoneysuckle · 15/09/2019 09:48

Ds not dh!

ShirleyB50 · 15/09/2019 09:52

I can see why he's an Ex

Stressedout10 · 15/09/2019 09:52

I know that this may be a extreme belief, but what your ex did is child abuse and it would be the last time he had DC unsupervised.
No child wants or needs to see that if it was the same footage that I saw at the time she will have watched the people who jumped.

GrimpenMire · 15/09/2019 09:54

This appalling behaviour from him OP! This would have a terrible effect on a 6yo. It's traumatising for grown adults but children of six don't have the ability to contextualise it. I would not let him have unsupervised access after this. It's abusive.

Tonnerre · 15/09/2019 09:54

If your child has come away thinking it was bombed, it doesn't sound as if she was paying it much attention.

Baguetteaboutit · 15/09/2019 09:55

It's not shielding children from the real world by saving them from the trauma of watching three hours of thousands of people dying in all manor of tragic ways. There's a grey area, were you just tell them what happened.

billy1966 · 15/09/2019 09:56

Absolutely inappropriate OP.

I am a huge believer in age appropriate tv.

Children's minds are very suggestible, there is nothing to be gained by them being terrified.

I have often read of problems in children being traced back to watching something that they didn't understand but that left them worried and scared.

Medea11 · 15/09/2019 10:06

I was 6 when it happened, and I was terrified by what I saw on the news for years. It sounds stupid, but even in my early teens, the sound of a plane landing overhead would make my heart start to race. She’s far too young to have seen that in such detail.

Ludways · 15/09/2019 10:10

I also think it is very different watching things unfold when you're alive at the time. If you were a child watched it live then, although scary, you watched your parents process the information and copied them in processing it too. Just having 3 hours thrown at you at age 6 doesn't allow for that process.

MerlinsScarf · 15/09/2019 10:27

Yes, watching live footage at the time, and news clips afterwards, is a different matter. Nobody knew what would happen so it was relevant to follow the coverage.

HotChocolateLover · 15/09/2019 10:32

Weirdly enough I was watching some 9/11 stuff yesterday and, yes, it’s too much for a 6 year old. Honestly, if i’d Seen a film like that at the cinema i’d Have been tutting going ‘yeah right, whatever’. But I still remember that day and it was literally like a horror movie live on TV. You’re right to be fuming OP.

isabellerossignol · 15/09/2019 10:35

I don't think 3 hours of ongoing footage is appropriate at age 6 but I'm also not of the belief that we should shield children. My 7 year old has seen some footage of it because he is very inquisitive about history and world affairs. He thought it was an awful thing but he didn't grasp the enormity of it. I don't expect he really understood that there were people trapped in those buildings who died a terrifying death and I'm not, at this stage, going to start explaining it to him.

FrauHaribo · 15/09/2019 10:37

I can't understand and agree with people who live the tv on and the news on in the background when there's kids around.

Fine if you do want to watch the news together and are ready to explain and discuss as you go, but 3 hours of tv is ridiculous for a 6 years old.

You can keep updated with the world without showing adult version to your kids, it's so unnecessary! And that applies to the fairly recent terrorists attacks in Paris and London - even when your kids live there!

dottiedodah · 15/09/2019 10:40

Do you think he maybe did it in purpose ?.To try and scare her from going away at Xmas ,and leaving him behind!.I agree that this borders on Child Abuse TBH.I would be unhappy and maybe think to report to SS even !.How can u be sure that he wont do something similar in the future ?

Roomba · 15/09/2019 10:47

My 7 year old would probably watch a few minutes, go 'wow' then be bored. He wouldn't grasp the magnitude of it or how many people were involved. But then I wouldn't deliberately show it to him, especially not if I was going on holiday any time in the next few years!

My ds would get really upset by it. He has been dwelling for months on the Brian Cox doc that talks about the Sun eventually destroying life on earth. We've learnt the hard way that he cant handle "real" stuff like that.
DS1 had months of being unable to sleep at this age, thanks to a book about space that I bought him. My mother's attempt to 'help' by pointing out 'That's 8 billion years away, none of us will be here by then anyway' really weren't very helpful! Hmm

RantyAnty · 15/09/2019 10:48

Extremely inappropriate.

Yes, you ex is a dimwit.

A 6 year old's brain is far different from an adults.

Exposure isn't going to give them understanding. Their brains just aren't developed enough.

They may come away not thinking much of all of it as it is just something they saw or they might be frightened thinking their world is a dangerous place.

Not sure how much luck you'd have suggesting exDH to watch some youtube about Jean Piaget and childhood development.

RantyAnty · 15/09/2019 10:53

@FrauHaribo

I agree. I truly don't understand why child development isn't a required class in every school.

I gave up trying to explain to people or encouraging them to learn more about it. Just too many dimwits around who are steadfast in their own ways to bother.

MumW · 15/09/2019 11:10

My DC was 5 and a half when this happened. Initially, we said nothing after school and kept the tv off.

However, the following morning we realised that it would be a subject being talked about so just said yesterday some nasty men crashed their plane into a building. We kept it all matter if fact.

What your ex has done is way out of line. Not quite sure how you can go about damage limitation but just talk to her in age appropriate language when she asks. I assume you are flying at Christmas. Maybe tell her not to worry it all happened a long time ago.

It might be worth giving her teacher the heads up in case your DD brings it up at school.

sashh · 15/09/2019 11:14

Bloody hellOP YANBU.

Knowing, understanding and comprehension are different things.

One of my vivid child hood memories is my mum watching the news with my mum hugging me and explaining that Edward Daly was a brave man e waving a handkerchief. I don't remember much else but I'd obviously been upset at the news. I would have been six then and we (Brother and I) were kept away from the news after that for a long time other than john Craven.

cranstonmanor · 15/09/2019 11:14

Telling someone something is massively different from showing them (possibly traumatic) footage of it. I know that people were tortured and gassed during WW2 but even now I thi k I would find seeing it on film quite traumatic and I'm 40!

cranstonmanor · 15/09/2019 11:18

Just to add: so I think that seeing 9/11 now would be traumatic for a child too. I mean it was a big impression on us adults back then as well.

RainbowAlicorn · 15/09/2019 11:22

I agree it is important for her to know, but an age appropriate conversation about it would have been better, rather than making a 6 year old watch the terror that ensued and to make her watch 3 hours of it is horrendous.

alittleprivacy · 15/09/2019 11:43

A happy safe confident childhood is very much a white privilege (and probably explains why white people tend to be so naive).

Huh? My skin is so pale it’s practically blue but I’m of an ethnicity that was subject to an attempt at genocide through starvation in the 19th century. I spent much of my childhood learning about it. My older relatives in my childhood had fought for our freedom, as was the case for everyone I knew. All through my childhood and teens people of my ethnicity who did not benefit from the freedom I enjoyed were still subject to oppression. And even now the government of our former oppressor is making their utter disdain for us obvious and trying to subject us to a multitude of threats because we won’t destroy our own economy along with them.

The European Jews of the 1930s and 40s who you were the subject of the post your response was to were mostly white.

Plenty of white people were historically subject to vicious, violent oppression and carry those scars through the generations.

Yabbers · 15/09/2019 11:47

A happy safe confident childhood is very much a white privilege (and probably explains why white people tend to be so naive).

With the exception of your wide sweeping generalisation about white people, I do agree with this.

However, I’m not sure that’s a good reason to take it away from kids who have it. It’s not a post 9/11 thing. I remember mum trying to shield us from some of the horrific things going on in the world when we were little. We learned about these things when we were old enough to handle the truth.

There were things like school shootings I shielded DD from at that age. She had no need to know and it would have been counterproductive to have her think this could happen at her school. The terrorist attacks in Paris were all over the news, I turned it off. At 6 they can’t rationalise it. She didn’t need to live in fear just because some children in the world do.

She’s ten now and knows about these things. She knows her privileges and is not naive about it. In fact, she actively supports a charity helping children who are living in these areas.

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