Jacqueline Wilson - enforced ban for DD(11) - AIBU?!

[misspollysdolly]

DD has read quite a few JW books and has enjoyed the Tracey Beaker TV show - which we have all watched. DD is adopted so some aspects (particularly of Tracey B) have opened some interesting and useful discussion in the past, most of which we have approached and coped with positively.

However, this week I have imposed a blanket ban on her reading JW books as the last three she has written have resulted in her being completely awful for us at home. Took me a while to make the link, but it is definitely those books that are the common variable. She starts one, get stuck into in completely (i.e it becomes 'unputdownable' for her) and then gets increasingly angry, irritable, easily upset or stroppy and can't explain her feelings at all.

I just think that they deal with really quite complex, emotional issues and they really press her buttons really really deeply. I am starting to hate the fallout at home, hence the blanket ban. The last two have been especially bad - Hetty Feather and Clean Break. Has anyone else found their children have reacted this way to Jacqueline Wilson books, or that you have not been comfortable with the subject matter and have veto'd them...??! MPD

misspollysdolly I don't think you are being unreasonable - I read some of the later JW myself and encountered a great deal of emotional turmoil and unease even in myself (!) so have absolutely avoided my DD coming into contact with them. Think this absolutely varies from child to child hence other parents having no trouble with them (as several of my DD's school mates) but if your child is sensitive to these sorts of issues (as it sounds like she may be) then why not just avoid the turmoil by reading other things- I don't think there's anything wrong with you wanting to protect her from books that are clearly stirring up disturbing and unhappy feelings for her. On other had, have to agree that 'banning' books outright is a shame - maybe try to be really open about link between books and her behaviour and explain that you're only worried about her and provide exciting alternatives???

My start in life wasn't all roses round the door either and I was taken out of my parents care, but I was too old for adoption.

I've found that when I'm trying to understand who I am that I spend large periods of time looking for people like me or relevant stories. There are a lot of memoirs of bad childhoods out there for me to read and I do.

My partner has expressed pretty much what you have with your daughter. He thinks the reading material makes me withdrawn and causes me to be more emotional. He would like me to refrain as he thinks I'd be my usual self all the time. He's wrong.

It's not what I'm reading that causes the bad times, it's me. I read this stuff because I am drawn to it. I am drawn to it because I need to understand it. I need to understand it because it's a part of who I am. The books don't make me go through bad patches, the bad patches were always there. What the books do is give me ways to understand it, understand that part of me which doesn't have a place in my daily existance.

Your daughter, like me, is living a nice life with nice people, after another kind of life altogether. I try to say this to my partner and he says I should talk to him, but it's not the same. I will never find kinship in him, he hasn't been where I have.

Kinship and understanding are so important at her stage of emotional development. They are important to us all but for adults like me it's a phase, a bad week, a bad couple of weeks when we don't really want to play the normality game with everyone else and we're Ok again after. For her I think it's a powerful expression of not being like everyone else. Of being different.

Don't ban the books. Read them. Read them not as a worried mum looking for where your daughter was led astray but read them as she does, as someone seeking to understand. If you get into the habit of reading the books she is reading then you will naturally find that you and her have more opportuinities to converse about what's on her mind.

Kids often kick off when all they really want is to know where they stand. Eleven is the right age for a developing sense of identity. Her identity is more complex than just being your daughter.