8 year old reading grim newspaper article at school

[Pearlclutching]

Name changed but have been hanging out around here for almost a decade.

I don't know if I'm overreacting and would like some advice.

DS8 and I were at the shops at the weekend, and he spotted a headline on the local paper. Something along the lines of Sex Offender Convicted of Taplow Lake Murder. He was immediately interested and said he knew all about it, rattling off accurate, detailed information about the case and the previous offences of the man responsible. He told me he'd read a big article about it on a sheet of newspaper being used to cover the table in an art class. He asked me what a sex offender is and why someone would bind and gag a woman before killing them. We haven't had a talk about sex and I really don't want his first knowledge of it to be violent and negative.

When I told my husband, he was horrified and said I should let the school know. Not so much a complaint as a heads-up.

This morning, I told the head of lower school what happened but didn't make any requests or give any opinion - just stated the facts. He chuckled, said my son will do well on the crime round at pub quizzes in future, and praised his curiosity.

Is it reasonable to expect a school to make some effort to shield lower school pupils from the details of sex crimes and sexually-motivated murder or is the head of lower school right to chuckle and say it's fine? My husband thinks I should go to the headmaster, but I'm not sure.

Really interested to know what people think.

Absolute nonsense. Because he's a fluent reader he can cope with anything? 50 shades of grey?

OP you are absolutely right to want to shield your child from this sort of content. There are always some on MN who poohpooh protective parents. Childhood is so short. Children need to be allowed to remain children.

Kids need to understand that the real world is a harsh, tough, hard place.
It is not all fluffy bunnies and cuddles from mummy

That is awesome for his reading age, truly. Makes a wonderful change from seeing kids on ipads and phones.

It will get harder and harder for him to avoid inappropriate material, or even overhearing his friends talking in the playground. In a year or two his mates will be talking about sex and girls. Yes, really. Its time to start educating him on real world stuff in age appropriate way. Its out there, its not avoidable but you can filter the worst while you are in charge. You soon won't be.

To anyone who thinks I think the teacher was appropriate can wind their necks in (to use a mn phrase), I was trying to help the op move forward to do something more proactive. Personally the easiest way is buying washable covers for a permanent solution. She can still complain about the teachers attitude but that doesn't stop it happening in another school/teacher/time, or to other parents.

The teacher isn't going to do anything.

Total overraction, I think. The school can hardly pore over every article they're using to cover a table.

He's not completely ignorant, just protected from knowing about the really grim stuff. He reads about war, murder and crime in children's books, and consumes children's news via Newsround and First News, but they rightly skip sex crimes.

Great he's got a reading age of 15, but surely he also needs to be exposed to some stuff that does take a level of self control? For example a tablet that's only going to be used on certain days or hours.

No tv for him to be able to turn off when required, so I presume he isn't learning self control there?

No tablet or computer the same.

He needs other life skills apart from an advanced reading age.

You've raised the matter, hopefully the teacher will be more careful, particularly with a child who is such an avid reader.

I think the schools response is very poor. Obv not able to pore over every article but surely the Sports pages or something? These are primary School DC FFS!

I'm with @KettrickenSmiled on this. Shouldn't have happened, shouldn't have been minimised. Really poor attitude, both to children's mental health and safeguarding. I would be taking that teacher's response to more senior members of staff who might be able to convince him that we don't smirk about sex crimes.

So it's ok to expose 8 year olds to gruesome stories about "ladies being tied up & killed"?

There is a whole world between that & fluffy bunnies @standoctor
It's not actually obligatory to plump purely for one or the other.

I would be taking that teacher's response to more senior members of staff who might be able to convince him that we don't smirk about sex crimes.

Thank you @Gentleness - I've found it hard to wade through some of the minimising of this. The teacher found femicide an amusing joke. You've gotta wonder if that's the thin end of his attitude wedge.

Do they have sex offenders back in the 1600s?

Your child could see any of this just walking around a supermarket. I think expecting teachers to check all the newspapers for anything like this is a bit much. I think a simple statement that' there are some horrible things in the news' would be enough followed up by ' please get another piece and show the teachers if you find anything like that again'.

Not the point of the thread I know, but how does he know what's going on in the world?

Your child could see any of this just walking around a supermarket.
He couldn't though, could he? - all he would get is a brief snapshot of headlines, Not 45 minutes (or whatever the lesson length is) to pore over the minute details.

I think expecting teachers to check all the newspapers for anything like this is a bit much.
Any Safeguarding lead would disagree.

I think a simple statement that' there are some horrible things in the news' would be enough followed up by ' please get another piece and show the teachers if you find anything like that again'.
Pretty much spot on - but this teacher doesn't sound capable of that.
He finds rape & murder appropriate subjects for mirth & cocky remarks.
He needs somebody senior to have a fucking word, frankly.

We no longer use newspaper as it became almost impossible to filter out all the unsuitable material. Some articles could be very upsetting for children and many tabloids still have sexist, scantily clad, models all over their pages as well as plenty of misinformation and just plain crap! I wouldn't subject my children to this so I'm especially mindful with other people's children. It wouldn't be acceptable to accidently show children clips of adult films so why is it OK to save money on tablecoverings and subject them to potentially harmful printed material?

Radio?
Tablet/computer?
Human speech?

... Carrier pigeon? Tickertape? Fax? Smoke signals?

Yes but (the luckier) children hopefully learn this in a controlled way over time at developmentally appropriate stages. Or do you tell your kids the worlds full of pedos, rapists, warmongers, liars and bastards from the get go?

Oh for God's sake.

How does he watch Newsround, OP, if you don't have any media or devices?

How does he watch news round if you don't have a tv?

Newsround is shown at school.

IMO the fact children are shielded so much from the world around them is partly why so many teenagers end up with anxiety.

They’ve never been exposed to the fact that bad things happen in the world, they grow up in a bubble where they’re protected from the knowledge that not all in the world is rosy, and then suddenly they hit an age where they can read about this stuff for themselves and they are overwhelmed by it.

I was an absolute news junky growing up. I used to go into school and talk about the falklands war when I was 8. If there was anything happening in the world I would know about it. The news was never switched off, and if I had any questions I could ask my parents.

At the end of the day children have suffered at the hands of this man, whoever he was. He obviously has an interest in news or he wouldn’t have read the article and wouldn’t have retained it.

While I wouldn’t necessarily have expected him to read it in class, I imagine that so many people don’t read newspapers these days because they find their news online, that many don’t even think to check what’s in them when putting them on the table to protect for art.

But papers are out there, and he can just as much read them in a shop as on the school table.

And at 8 he should have an understanding of sex. It shouldn’t come to his first knowledge of sex being found in an article which, due to his reading age, he has been able to read from start to finish.

As for the teacher, while on the face of it the remark sounds off, the child has read and retained the article, and to an extent there is a compliment in there in that he is clearly interested in news, and clearly has the retention skills that he will remember what he has read in future.

@EinsteinaGogo @ProclivityForPyrotechnics

Tablet?

Also - who cares?
Not sure why PP are getting persnickety about what the lad watches/reads at home, when the issue is what he inadvertently read at school.

This.

You can't shield a child from the world.

You can teach them how to navigate it.