News/Current Affairs for Year 7s

[EldonsSocks]

DD1 (11) has just started Yr 7 and says that she doesn't know anything about current affairs and the news compared to other children in her year (I think this came up in a Geography lesson). We may have been protective but we do try to answer questions, we are quite politically aware and discuss things; I just don't think that some of the graphic and disturbing images on the front pages of the nationals are appropriate at 11. I have suggested she looks at Newsround more (I still like to watch it and their explanations are balanced and sensitive, but v straightforward).

Please don't suggest First News, as while it is fine for Primary, she has out grown Panda babies and the "World's Largest Crisp"! They also deal with big stories so much after the fact/crisis as to be redundant.

We don't get a paper delivered any more - I just use news-feeds on Twitter, FB and specific selected websites. Mainstream news is so graphic and difficult to mediate now that I don't think we can just set up a newspaper app or let her watch Ch4 news or whatever, without a huge ammount of monitoring and worry.

How have others dealt with this? It took me days to deal with the terrible images of the poor refugee children washed up on the beaches, I don't want to expose her to that horror yet.

Can she listen to the headlines on the radio?

We have Radio 5Live on in the kitchen and often start discussions about the things on the news there. Also I've gone back to buying a paper (i) and although DS doesn't actually read it much I flick through it at the kitchen table and again use it to kick start conversations. We have BBC news bookmarked on the computer too, DS uses it to access sports results and does look at the news stories too.

She does - (Radio 4 IS always on and I am always shouting at the radio!), but it's a bit opaque to her I think - names and voices that are meaningless. I do try and explain - but am clearly not doing the best job.

My boys are in year 7 at grammar and First News fits the bill,sorry. Today's had the refugee crisis on the cover,hardly redundant.

I'm puzzled by you saying it's not appropriate to watch the news, once in secondary.
If you are anxious about it, then sit with her to watch it, and talk about what is happening, don't avoid it.

I do think you are being a bit over protective to be honest, at 11 I don't think there's much they can't cope with if explained in appropriate terms. She may well not find things as shocking as you would think. Why not try buying a paper again? I switched to Kindle and apps a couple of years ago but have started buying them again now specifically because I want to have them around, for the DCs to see me reading them and start looking themselves.

Oh and 5Live is more accessible to the younger audience than R4.

My DC watch the TV news. At 6pm it is hardly full of dead refugee children. There was a big warning before the picture you are referring to. I agree with others, 6 o clock news is fine.

Also First News is ideal for KS3 IMO. My form loved it in year 7.

If you genuinely think main news shows are too graphic the BBC news round website is a great start - you can watch the latest news bulletin and read about various stories in more depth. This morning there is a mix the headline is Serena Williams out of the U.S. Open, but there are articles about the queen being the longest reign monarch and the rugee crisis. In year 6 form time last year they watched a new around bulletin and discussed it twice a week - just one of the many reasons last year's teacher was a big favourite of mine.
I could see that you may feel that for example to little boy's body on the beach might be inappropriate, but I used that with my exactly the same age/school year DD to discuss just how desperate those parents must feel to take such big risks.
You need to consider that now she is at senior school her exposure is going to change at DD's school clubs such as debating society are years 7 to 13 so current issues will be discussed at adult level.

Dd just hears/watches in the background when I've got bbc on at 6am, or sometimes in the evening, news bulletins on radio 1 etc. Before 9pm it's fine at that age, and tbh even when she was a lot younger, as long as I kept the remote handy for the odd part it was fine too. And sparked some interesting conversations. She does watch newsround too. But we're not really a tv sort of family, so it's not like she watches them all everyday.
Even with more gruesome stuff, I think knowing the facts, without the gory specifics is often less horrifying than hearing someone elses third hand gory account of it with none of the backstory.
Not to mention if she's going to debate it with other y7's, nevermind older teens.

DD, same age/school year, has been 'exposed' to breakfast and 6pm news since she was born.
She often interrupts my viewing/listening to argue from an alternative perspective.

Firstly, you sound a bit overprotective, understandably but maybe not helpful in the long run.

Imho children don't need to know everything about everything, current affairs is not a testable subject at school and I would rather my child spent more time on core subjects and playing than forcing them to watch news they have no interest in.

Their will always be other kids who know more than yours in some subjects. The sporty kids, the music kids, the academic kids, the celebrity culture kids, video game kids, etc. DC copes with this by knowing more than them in his favourite subjects. Playing to his strength, swings and roundabouts.

Practically: news plays on the radio in the background, bbc news at 6 is on tv in the background they are NOT to violent or graphic for an 11yo but don't force them to watch it. Occasionally they will look or listen to it and ask a question, usually before my answer is finished they are so bored they have moved on.

In the car I will occasionally bring up signigicant recent events, who won the tennis, the election, who is at war, news headlines etc usually forces them to actually think about the issue and express their own opinion rather than the newsreaders opinion.

You do sound very over protective tbh.

huge ammount of monitoring and worry. - Bit extreme IMO.

How about the radio, my kids listen to KISS etc and they have the news on there, main headlines and then some seemingly obligatory celebrity stuff as well. The news on a mainstream radio station is a bit more gentle.

We can't keep our kids in bubbles, the world is a sad and troublesome place and as is already evident, her lack of knowledge is being highlighted at school.

As she gets older she will need to know these things for her studies, History will bring up things like the Holocaust, R.S will bring up some horrible things, English will bring up unpleasant historical events etc. She will need to understand and be able to link it all together. Also just for the sake of her not being na??ve to these horrible things as well.

There are ways to introduce it all carefully and it is important you talk to her about these things as well.

Another thing you could do, is introduce the horrible stuff through charities, so she can donate a bit of pocket money to an Amnesty International charity, or a charity for abused children, women's charities, homelessness etc you can do some petitions with her online and things. That way she can see the horrible things, understand why they are horrible and take the edge off with helping/see how you can help people suffering? My kids have always done charity work and I find it a good way of getting them interested in current affairs and understanding the issues.

Jeez, I am over-protective because I don't want my kids to see dead babies? She is neither in a bubble nor molly-coddled, well aware of the Holocaust (not least from reading Anne Frank's diary), wars, poverty, famines, 9/11 etc etc - I just wouldn't want her to have to deal with some of the images I have seen recently. I also think that I should have put "anything" in inverted commas as that was her phrasing.

She is pretty politically aware (and naturally empathetic and sensitive - we have had many years of her worrying about tsunamis, floods, forest fires and earthquakes happening in the UK - so I may be conditioned to be a bit cautious). She has, in terms, somewhat gentler than some of the posts above, said that she wants to know more about stuff and that I need to tell her - which is right - I am glad to be led by her, but, not unreasonably, I am concerned as to how to do this well. Perhaps my worry/upset about recent events clouded the expression of my question which is more: how do you deal with the really difficult stuff in an age appropriate way and what resources do you use? And I have my answers - so thank you. I think I am just catching up with moving to the next level. Also I have a 7 year old - so managing separate viewing/access can be tricky.

We got the physical paper today for the first time in ages, as advised, and have been looking together (god it is full of crap though and so quickly out of date when we all have live news feeds!) - it resulted in lots of questions and good discussion. I think that reading the paper is good for reading skills, critical thinking and research so has all sorts of benefits for curriculum subjects - but I hadn't articulated it to myself like that before and we just got out of the habit of having it around.

Newsround is fab and she used to watch it more so we had a look at the Syria article which was great with videos and clear explanations. DD2's teacher had it on regularly in class last year (year2) and she at 6 knew all sorts of things - so I think we stopped having it on at home - that and the endless cycle of Next Step episodes.

We got First News for over a year and it was the children who wanted to stop it as they found a great deal of it really trivial and didn't give them the depth of answer they wanted. Reporting on the refugee crisis now seems a bit late to me when Syria has been in the news for three (4?) years and is very prominent and escalating all summer. They didn't address the ebola crisis last year till the whole thing was nearly over. It's hardly news and definitely not first.

We don't listen to 5live, because it's never on my radar (though I will give it a go), but R4 is not great (god knows the Today programme drives me up the wall).

But I had a lightblub moment! We eat with the kids at 6 so I haven't seen the news then in years; we tend to watch CH4 or 10 o'clock news in the evenings - so she misses it or it is close to watershed. Of course it is less graphic - dur!

Thanks all

Jeez, I am over-protective because I don't want my kids to see dead babies? She is neither in a bubble nor molly-coddled

To be fair, you said in your OP that you had been protective, that she knew "nothing compared to her peers" on these issues, said that it would cause "a huge amount of monitoring and worry" for her to watch the news. The last thing is especially odd, I replied accordingly. No need to get het up about people calling you over protective when you presented yourself as such.

We watch the news in our family without monitoring or worry. If a child has a question it is answered in an appropriate way that they will be able to understand. While I agree that the recent images of the small children being washed up are horrific they are unfortunately part of the world we live in. Both my children have seen these images and we have discussed it together. I do not think there is anything on the news that I would filter from my children aged 14 and 9. Why is there a need ?

As an aside if your child is at secondary school then many of her peers will have phones etc with internet access where they and she are able to see all kinds of things without you knowing or bring able to control it.

RachelZoe - not really het up as it's a bit off the point, but "to be fair" I think there is a tiny bit of a difference between me describing myself as "protective" and you characterising me as "very over-protective" ("odd" too in the last one, thanks for that).

Do you not monitor your kids online & tv access? I was looking for advice/experiences on access to news and current affairs as we move up into more adult and difficult areas of life, and it seems that many can confirm that it is ok, which is helpful. But it's hard to explain difficult complex things, that was all I was trying to express - or does everyone just find it easy to explain things in an age appropriate way? I find the constant onslaught of what I would really categorise as extreme images, violent, tragic, sexual are something I want filter and interpret and it does worry me - not that we can't talk about them at all, just that they don't always need to see it all surely?

Lot's of good, helpful tips here. Personal judgments less welcome.

The only things I filter to some extent now (DCs 9 and 11) are ISIS beheadings, as I find that particularly disturbing myself, and some details of cases of sexual abuse, particularly cases with child victims. Having said that we don't routinely watch the news together (we're very rarely in the living room at 6, usually out or eating), so most of ours comes from radio and newspapers. DS browses the BBC website a lot (sports fanatic) and has never come across anything I'd regard as inappropriate.

Why do they need news the instant it comes out?

I'd frankly rather have considered articles written for my children than knee jerk instant articles any day.

And to be fair to First News up until the little boys pictured on the beach there was very little news anywhere regarding the refugee crisis unless you count the anti immigrant crap that surfaced now and again. Those pictures brought the reality of what was happening into the open. It was hidden and ignored in the press before.