To be upset that DD1 class be told all about Afghanistan when she's 5?

[MrsPurple]

I don't think I'm over reacting and am looking for reassurance. My DD1 (year 1), came home from school yesterday telling all about fighting and the war in Afghanistan.

I had many difficult questions off her.

It turns out a classmates uncle came in to talk to class about his job etc.

No letter was sent out re asking parents to come and talk about jobs and no letter that it was going to happen, because I would have wanted her excluded from this.

I know children need to know re some stuff but when she's older, at the moment it's my discretion.

The man told them all about fighting and war and guns.

I had a problem re a teaching game used a few weeks back called shoot out that the teacher used (I asked for help on here re that). The teacher ressured me they wouldn't use it again.

I now fell that my worries weren't listened to and want to email the Head, who I know quite well. AIBU?

I think the OP's point is valid though that it doesn't seem to be part of any wider discussion about either jobs or conflict.

I would be annoyed if this happened without warning at my daughter's school.

I think hearing about the realities of life is one thing but I would wonder whether a soldier would be best placed to paint a balanced picture that wasn't just about us against the 'baddies'.

Especially as it has been pointed out, the teacher may not have even known what the guest was going to say. I'm sure a lot of the children would have wanted to know about guns, etc and not his experiences with the local people affected by war.

I think this type of discussion(about war) can be had with a 5yo but by the parents who know exactly their children sensitivity and can work arround it. I think in a classroom with 20 or more children it is not appropriate as there is very little way to actually know what most of them will have "got" from it. I think YANBU!

Bunnies, children here are not all sheltered and precious. They see misery and violence and abuse in their own homes. Every day. They see their family being split apart and coming back together with other adults and children. Is this not enough? At 5 years old?

Why teach 5 year olds about things that are NOT in their experience, when they are not equipped to understand them and in all likelihood will be very disburbed by such knowledge? Role-playing etc to help understand and resolve their own conflicts in their own circumstances would go further to help them deal with the realities of life.

My five year old's in reception. He's had lots of parents come in and talk about what they do and we don't know in advance.

I was talking to him about Afghanistan the other day. He already knows about war, to a small extent given his age. He has a very good handle on the banking crisis. I find his responses to the radio news a really good cue for teaching him about the world.

I think it's an essential part of learning. I wouldn't be happy if someone came in glorifying war but I'd be happy with a soldier telling him about his job. Surely that's a gradual introduction to the horrors in other parts of the world?

I turn off the radio when they report about child abuse too graphically as I haven't quite worked out what to say about this.

My dd would silently worry herself sick about such things, not try to discuss them. Is she alone in this?

i think it depends a lot on context tbh. like many other posters, dh is a solsier, and so our children have age-appropriate knowledge of what war and operations involve. (oh, and i have 16 years worth of military service and counting, so it's not just the daddies lol)
round here it wouldn't really be necessary for one of the daddies to pop in to talk to the 5yo's, as most of the children only have to look out of their windows to see tanks and troop carriers around. i see this as a perfectly ordinary pshe visit in the same context as firemen and police/ ambulance workers. i think at 5 it's also perfectly valid to express the role in the same type of language as the police do tbh - some people do things that are wrong, and our job is to try and stop them and help the country get back together afterwards. i think a policeman debating the validity of the legal system and policy in this country would be about as useful as a soldier attempting to debate the rights and wrongs of a government decision to become embroiled in different conflicts. certainly these are issues that children will face as they get older and more able to exercise their opinions, (and of course soldiers aren't immune to those debates and do exercise their own opinions for and against lol) but at 5 it is probably fine to generalise a little.

and i think the soldiers are actually in a far better place to describe their job than anyone else to be honest - that's like asking if a policeman is the best person to talk about his job. lol. it wasn't political indoctrination, unless you believe that anyone going in to talk about their job is.

last week we had a satellite designer in talking to the yr 2s. it is perfectly ordinary to get lots of input from the local community about jobs throughout KS1. i know when the police and ambulance guys come in, they visit all the year groups. there've been a host of others - couldn't name them all.

I think yabu.

I think that we've developed into a generation who for some reason feel the need to micro manage our children. And tbh I don't think it is any good for them at all.

I had the most vivid imagination of all when i was a child, and yet I was a news junky, and was never shielded from the news ..

The war in Afghanistan is real. There are most likely children in that school who have family in the army there. Why should everyone else be shielded from that?

You see Thingone, I do not see anything wrong with YOU talking about it to your own children, but I think somehow, the school context is different. I might be over sensitive though. I watch the news even if the children are arround and always try to answer thier question to the best of my knowledge but I would not like the school to do it.

If my DCs were asking a specific question about war in Afganistan I would expect the teacher to try and answer something of course but to have a lesson about it in school at that age I am not really sure.

but what would you do if another child was talking about it in the playground?

Reality is that you cannot shelter children from these things, and surely it's better they learn about it from adults than from other children who have been exposed to more than they have?

Well said, madwoman! I would not expect a secretary to come in and talk about what it's like to be a policeman - who else is in the correct position to talk to children aboutnlife in the Forces, other than a serving/ex member of the Forces?

We live on a civvie estate for the moment (but spent several years bouncing around the usual barracks in the usual places!) and our eldest son will start at the local nursery while is father is away in theatre. I hope thye nursery will be supportive (I haven't yet made my visit) of our family circumstances rather than saying that they'd prefer us/son not to talk about his father's job because it's not "nice" for the other children adn their parents will complain.

My son is very proud of the fact that his daddy is a soldier, as am I. Why should we hide that?

I wonder how much of this is really about children, and how much is about people not wanting their children to know about things they disapprove of?

A bit like atheists who don't want their children told about religion.

A fair point, wannaBe.

very good point wannaBe

Without knowing the content of the talk it is difficult to say how unreasonable or otherwise the OP is being.

The point about people being precious vs telling children everything going on in the world is one that I can't agree with.

People say that 5yo should be told that children around the world are being forced to work in sweatshops and taken to fight in wars. Should they also be told that the girl children taken are forced into sex with the adult soldiers and the boy soldiers are conditioned to kill by being brutalised and forced to kill other children? I would say not. But these things are true.

Terrible things are happening all around the world that as an adult I find extremely upsetting and they play on my mind all the time. To ask children to assimilate the true horrors that people inflict on each other at age 5 seems too much. It has been said that children in other countries are experiencing these things and so children in this country should learn about them. But children who experience war, violent death of family members, villages being burned, let alone any of the worse things, are often extremely disturbed and traumatised.

Children pick these things up from headlines and the news etc gradually as they grow older. To tell them the "truth" - that the world is not safe, that people are evil and violent and like to hurt and torture others - can't that wait? At age 5 I want DD to know her "truth" - that she is secure and loved and safe - which hopefully will equip her emotionally to deal with the terrible truth about the world as and when she comes to it.

Final point is that children that age see things in black and white - they surely aren't equipped to deal with the grey areas surrounding things like the war in Afghanistan, how it was linked to 9/11, the Taliban and treatment of women, why even though the "goodies" have been fighting for years they don't seem to be getting anywhere, how the biggest export is Heroin and the implications of that... and so on. What is the point of just telling them that the goodies have to fight the baddies? Someone said better than disney, but is the message they will have received about all this really different from a disney film, given their age? There is a reason that fairy tales are so black and white - children understand it.

wannaBe - completely agree!

I know that my DD wouldn't worry herself unduly about events that she hears about - we'll discuss them, try and rationalise what's happening and see the event from different perspectives, then she'll wander off and happily do something else.

I think the more debate and discussion that is had, the more easily a child can begin to understand and address any anxieties.

But, with reference to the OP, I've always treated DD as a mini-adult in relation to almost all issues. I've always been extremely open with her about all issues, I've tried to get her to critically assess things from various perspectives (must be the academic in me!) and I've taken the line that shielding children from things doesn't really help. But, I accept that others think very differently and restrict certain types of information from being passed to their DCs.

cancel the police visits too then. and the ambulance workers.
can't have any grey areas about crime and murder and vandalism and rioting and stabbings.
or do you think the ambulance people stick to the 'we collect people who are poorly or have had an accident and take them to hospital'?
i think most of said 'age-appropriate' lol.

"To tell them the "truth" - that the world is not safe, that people are evil and violent and like to hurt and torture others - can't that wait? At age 5 I want DD to know her "truth" - that she is secure and loved and safe - which hopefully will equip her emotionally to deal with the terrible truth about the world as and when she comes to it."

Shambolic, I do agree with you (and with your point about children seeing the world in black and white). My sons know they are loved and that we are doing the best to provide them with a safe and secure environment in order to let them grow into valuable members of the community. We firmly believe in the Army values of Integrity, Duty and "Service before Self", that respect has to be earned, not given as a right, that honour and truth are values by which to live our lives.

I wish we could wait a little longer before dealing with some of the realities of my husband's job, but we don't have that luxury. We know people who have died on active service, leaving children behind, as well as though who are dealing with life-changing injuries. I have to talk about things (in appropriate terms) with my son, in case something happens to his father. I would hope that anyone else involved in my son's care would be supportive of this.

However, that does not mean that I don't understand the the OP and many on this thread who wish to shelter their children.

I suppose my point is that it is unlikely that the soldier in the OP talked in graphic detail about his job (if he did, then the OP would be right to be worried!) but in general terms in the same way that any adult would talk to children about what they do on a day to day basis. I don't see why a distinction should be made between a soldier/sailor/airman talking about his job and any other respectable occupation.

Why should a soldier's child be told that his father/mother cannot talk to his class about their job because it's not appropriate?

Completely agree with RSB and wannabe.

I'd like DD(3) to learn about everything in an age appropriate way - in the case of war, there is certainly a way to explain it to chilren aged five that helps them understand what it is and why it happens. I struggle to think of anything that cannot be explained truthfully in this context.

Of course no-one wants their kids to worry and be terrified about things but they'll certainly hear about these things in the playground and from their peers anyway and probably in a much more unpleasant and far less contextualised manner. And, equally importantly if they're going to fret, they're going to fret regardless of what you do, short of keeping them shut in a box. Hell, I remember spending several months as a child being terrified that I was going to be eaten by a T-Rex after inadvertently (ahem, sneakily) watching Dr. Who for ten minutes.

not sure about this "children of our generation are so sheltered" thing. When I was a 5yo, children were probably more sheltered than they are now. I didn't watch the news at 5, none of my friends did either. Besides, the news reporting was far less graphic then than it is now.

In a sense I do agree with the posters who don't want to give children too sheltered a school life. And I certainly wouldn't want to monitor playground conversations.

But would you be fine with the next professional talk being by the lady from the abortion clinic? That's another job that people's parents do do- why shelter children from that? Personally, I am pro-choice, so it wouldn't be because I disapprove; I just think that is a lot to take on at age 5.

Have to say I'm torn on this one.

as a child I remember my grandparents telling stories of the war, and how the planes used to fly over at night dropping bombs.

We lived near RAF Lyneham so planes often used to come over at night. I can well remember thinking that they must be coming to drop bombs on us...

I survived.

cory but that is totally different, as abortion is not something that children need to know about - it is not a part of any child's life in the same way as having a parent in the army is.

A parent may have an abortion but that's unlikely to be public knowledge. But if a child's parent died in Afghanistan would you want it kept quiet for fear of upsetting the other children?

wannaBe, I also grew up hearing about the 2. world war, and how my grandma fled Silesia, etc...and thinking back to some of the stuff...I am sure it was inapprorpiate, but well, I survived that, too...

No I see what your getting at WannaBe. But when it comes to a child's parent dying in Afghanistan, I think that is a bridge you can cross when you come to it. Doesn't mean all children will have to cross that particular bridge at age 5.

Our primary school have recently told all its pupils that the mum of one of them is dying from cancer. This was something they had to do, because the little boy needed extra support and understanding. So his needs were felt to outweigh the needs of the other children not to be worried. Fair enough, I don't think anyone objected to that.

Does this mean that all small children should have talks about mums dying of cancer? I don't think so. It's not going to be everybody's experience, but it could lead to some children getting needlessly frightened. Five is very young for this sort of thing when you don't have to.

And btw I think hearing about war stories in the past is totally different. The present is scary in a way that the past is not.

If the policeman was going to come in and talk to the 5yos about how gang culture means that children are going around stabbing each other, and that children are trafficed into the country to work as slave labour and in the sex industry, and that there are psychopaths around who like to hurt main torture and kill because they enjoy it, then that would not be a good thing, no, IMO. It would be true though.

I notice that people are now saying "age appropriate" - which of course makes sense - but people earlier did not talk about things being age appropriate, simply that children should hear "the truth" about everything which is where I take issue.

Children do need to hear things that affect them directly or may affect them directly - jcscots DC need to know about war and soldiers and what it all means due to their situation.

Another example would be a friend of mine who recently lost a young family member to suicide and had to explain that to her 5yo. It was very difficult as the concepts of clinical depression, a history of attempts etc didn't make sense to the child. Her view was that if the family member was sad why hadn't anyone made them better? Who had made them sad? It was very difficult.

Telling all children all possible bad things that could possibly happen - I'm not sure why you would want to do that. Yes they will hear stuff in the playground - but why pre-empt that normal gradual process by telling them everything right now.