Should 7yr old be taught about the Holocaust

[wheeliemum]

Please help, my child is being taught about the holocaust at the age of 7 and whilst this may be part of our history there is a factor which she is reacting to; I am a disabled mum and use a wheel and during 1 assembly the whole school were told about the holocaust and how Hitler used to take wheelchairs from disabled people and kill them. All she took from this were the points that we relative i.e. wheelchiar=death. Following on from that she followed me everywhere and cried when she went to bed, this has now settled. However, she is now desplaying signs of anxiety and I have found that they are now being taught about Anne Frank and the Holocaust. Is it me, or isnt there enough evil going on in today's society without
regurgitated!! Is there anything I can do?

Ds2 is learning about it now and he is in year 6. Ds1 also covered it a bit when he was in yr 6. However have had to try to explain to dd1 who is in yr 2. She has overheard her brothers talking. I wouldn't say I dumbed it down for her. I tried to explain it in a way that wouldn't terrify her.

However I would be surprised if she was being taught about it at school.

There is a big difference between 'dumbing down' and age-appropriate explanation.

But what is the point of explaining the holocaust in 'a gentle fashion'? Why not wait a few years and explain it properly, rather than some holocaust-lite version.

Incidentally, it is well recognized that children facing genocide, rape, torture etc frequently suffer from mental trauma so maybe we should worry about it.

So will you wait until your dc is 14 before explaining sex to them? After all, they don't need to know about it until then. You could do it 'properly' then, and tell them about fisting, S&M and anal sex as well, not firgetting of course rape and STDs.

No, I don't think so. You'll tell them 'sex-lite', keeping it simple, pitched to their level, telling them only enough for them to absorb fir the time being. Maybe you'll start with the mummy and daddy seeds, if they ask age 3 or 4. But if they are 7 or 8 you might tell them about sperm and ova, and name organs. But one thing I'm sure you'll mention in all these discussions will be love.

And so by the time they are 14 and need to understand other aspects of sex, they will already have some knowledge and be better able to understand about more complex or disturbing aspects.

Just the same with other disturbing facts.

Very important to learn about it definitely. Needs to be taught appropriately to the age group though.

I didn't learn about the Holocaust at school, only the Front lines.

I've just read a "dumbed down" book about Birkenau. The Amazon reviews said it was gentle easing into the terror of Auschwitz. How you can be gently eased into the day to day life of an extermination camp is beyond me?! Horrendous.

The level of detail you mention is something I go into with my Year 8 classes and even then we build to it and the children are allowed to take small timeouts if the subject matter gets too much.

Holocaust education is a must because genocide is still happening and we are in danger of diluting memories as those who survived the camps are passing on. Young people needto keep that memory alive in a hope that nothing on the scale of the 30s & 40s under the Nazis happens again.

I would have no issues with DD being taught about the Holocaust at age 7 (or just now) if done in an age appropriate way. Explaining in a sensitive manner is not dumbing down.
DD (4) asked me in the run up to Rememberance Sunday about why people wore poppies. I explained about war and that a lot of people had been killed. She got how serious it was without getting frightened or distressed.

I think 7 is too young. Most of my fil's family perished in the holocaust (he survived as a young child, not in the camps thankfully) and dh grew up on holocaust stories which is certainly not a good thing!

How can a 7 year old possibly comprehend the horror of the holocaust - or any gencoide? My dd is 7 and goes to a Jewish school but they haven't taught them about the holocaust yet. She's vaguely aware of some bad things that happened a long time ago to daddy's daddy but I think it would terrify her to think that children were killed for being Jewish! I can totally see how your dd interpreted the message.

I'd speak to the school and explain your dd's reaction. They might not realise quite the effect that they've had.

redpanda13 - age 4 and 7 are worlds apart. At 4 understanding is very different, there is very little difference between reality and un-reality (for want of a different word) - that is vastly changed at age 7.

On the 5th of December I took DS 10 yrs and DS 6yrs into the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial war museum. There isn't an age restriction but they do not reccomend taking children in under 14 years.

We Home Ed and we are studying WW11 and I feel vey strongly that I want my children to know about the shoah, my father is Jewish and I feel that it is something that must never be forgotten.

Both boys were fine with it, they asked a lot of questions, the eldest was able to explain quite a lot to the youngest because of his prior knowledge.

earwicga-I was not suggesting that you would teach a 4 year old about the holocaust in the same way you would teach a 7 year old. I did say age appropriate. I think the OP's child was given an innapropriate amount of information but I still think 7 year old children should know something. In an age when historians such as David Irving are denying the holocaust even happened it is important to keep the memory of what happened alive.
I remember as a child in the 70's being forced to watch watching the World at War every Sunday afternoon. I saw film of the camps as did thousands of other children in the UK at lunchtime on a Sunday. I don't think parents complained like they do now as from what I remember the programme ran for about 5 years.

Yes, I remember The World at War, too. I was in primary school at the time, we watched it as a family. In fact clips from it were often used at both primary and secondary school.

The point about David Irving and his ilk is very important. The instinctive reaction to being told something horrific and disgusting for the first time is disbelief. Makes it much easier to believe the revisionist version of history. But if the truth has been a part of a person's consciousness for as long as they can remember, then they are less vulnerable.

The Little Boy Star: An Allegory of the Holocaust [

I have already taught my nearly 7 year old about the holocaust we visited Pont du Hoc and Longue sur mer in Normandy a we explained why the war started. In a few weeks time we are going to visit Anne Franks House.
Additionally we have been to Vimy Ridge and she has seen the thousands of graves there and understands that again started because some one was killed for not agreeing with some other people.
My grandmother was part of the liberation team at Berkenhau from very young she told us about what they found when they went through the gates, I believe that this honesty about lack of tolerance of other beliefs and the need to create a pure race helped me to grow up to be a tolerant adult.

I don't think that 7 is too young to be told something about the holocaust. However and as others have said, it sounds if your dd's school approached it in a clumsy way and I definitely think that you should talk to them and suggest that they take advice on their future approach.

My partner's father lost all his immediate family as a result of the holocaust and he is a survivor. As it is a fact of my dd's family history, we have never hidden it from her but have 'edited' what we have told her based on her level of understanding over the years.

The poster above is correct, the Imperial War Museum only recommends that their exhibition is for young people over 14 and we saw it with my dd when she was 8. She was not disturbed by it and it helped to explain some of the family story.

Last year, when she was in Year 5, her class studied the WW2 and she did her own mini-project which covered her grandfather's story and that of Anne Frank.

Unfotunately a number of children at her school have witnessed the more recent genocides. It is a fact of their lives and hopefully no one would want to discourage them from talking about it at school - but as I said it needs to be approached sensitively, as your dd's experience has obviously been very disturbing.

Just to clarify the position of the IWM regarding the age of the children allowed into the exhibition (I work there). 14 is indeed the recommended age. Several of you have said that you have taken your younger children in and explained things to them. This is absolutely fine and totally up to you, you know your child best.

Unfortunately we get a vast amount of people who view it merely as part of the museum and trek their children in with very little thought. This means that either young children are exposed to disturbing pictures and film with no thought given to what they might be seeing or children are allowed to run riot in there, disturbing other visitors, some of whom have experienced the horrors themselves or through family members. Visitor Services staff do try to talk to people at the entrance to make sure they know what they are taking their children into. The minimum age requirement hopefully discourages people from taking children into the exhibition lightly and has been in place since the exhibition opened in 2000.

For school groups the youngest group, without any exceptions, is year 9 (13-14yrs) and all of those are required to have a session of some sort with Education staff.

I hope this clarifies things a bit :)