To not want my dd (6) to know that some dads don't see their children?

[megapixels]

My dd, in Year 2, has got a book of short stories - and one of them is a chapter from Anne Fine's Crummy Mummy and Me. It's the one where the girl goes looking for her biological dad, whom she has never met until then (she is around 9 I think). AIU to skip that story and ask that the teacher not give her books of the sort in future? Dd was distressed enough when she knew that one of her friends has a step mother when her real mother was alive . I did explain to her about seperated families and that step mothers are not like those portrayed in fairy tales. She seems to have forgotten though as she was recently puzzling over "I went to my dad's" that had been written by someone in the class teddybear diary.

At this age I really don't want her to know that some dads (and mums) don't want to see their children. How do you explain that anyway? It would be different if it had to be discussed with her because of a real situation (eg. a friend at school) but is it so wrong that she thinks that all children live with their mums and dads who love them very much? She has time to learn about the realities of the world in her own time through her own experiences without it being forced on her, isn't it? She's only 6, nearing 7. AIBU?

No worries posh.

How can children from a home with a mummy and a daddy be 'destabilised' by learning that there are other families with different set ups? Heaven help ds's friends then who have to mix with him with his single mum and children with divorced parents.

Do you think I should be telling his friends' parents to start saving for therapy when their children are older?

I second what PSM says. I don't want pity for being a single mum. What I do want and get is a big pat on the back to myself for raising such a lovely little boy. At the end of term parents' meeting today his teacher almost burst into tears at the thought of him leaving her and moving up to year 1. I know that everything he is is 100% down to me and I couldn't be prouder.

You're reading some sort of judgement into my post which isnt there Mollie.

In the same way that children become fearful for a short while that people around them are going to die after their first brush with death. It's not rocket surgery now is it?

It can be unsettling tho. The realisation that the world you accept as normal is not normal for everyone. I had an upbringing I just accepted as normal. And actually realising people DID have stable home lives did destablise me for a while.

I don't think tha should be avoided though. But it can be unnerving for children who think their world is sorted out and then something makes them think differently. Some children are more sensitive than others.

Besides, and this is a spanner, most literature has to have drama in it that may or may not truly represent all examples (of other types of family). So as you say MollieO, you don't want pity and that is absolutely right, but many of these books deliberately evoke pity... would you be happy with that? Your child reading about a situation physically similar to his own that he is encouraged to feel pity for?

Books should enable children to learn about empathy (not just sympathy). LO's often lack this skill, and reading can help them see another side to life. Invaluable really.

I don't understand how it is destabilising at all, tbh. As for your death scenario, again that is not my experience. Ds understands the concept of death and has known people who have died. It hasn't made him think that I am going to die because of how I dealt with it at the time.

We are each entitled to our own opinion and your experience is obviously very different from anyone I know in RL.

I don't have a problem with that Mrsdoas.. Ds is old enough to understand what is RL and what is fiction and to appreciate the difference.

My experience of what Mollie? Of childrens reactions to death?

PSM how old is your DD? Has she ever seen her dad?

'Books are a fantastic way to explore all sorts of things in safety'

I agree -and the story in question will do the OP's DD no harm at all because she is reading it in a safe situation.

what is rocket surgery?

Its a bit like brain science

I haven't read the whole thread, but what utter bollocks. Would you not want your child to go to her friends house for tea if the mother was a single parent? It's the reality of my dd's life and I'd rather her have just me than two parents who bicker all the time

have sometimes read my dd (4) stories like Grace and Family etc and she has found it upsetting but only because she worries that similar might happen to me and her dad (suppose that things like death, divorce can be very unsettling to a child who has not encountered personally)
Also stories with themes of fighting racism seem to confuse her because she has never encountered racism of any kind and completely other races as part of her life as she goes to a very multi cultural school.