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 | art imitating life |
So here’s a light question for your Monday morning: Do you raise your kids for the world we live in, or for the world the way you think it should be? Just wondering.
At the library, we let our kids choose their own picture books to check out, and we keep winding up with these “how to deal with a problem” books. You know the ones I mean. How to handle a bully, or What to do when someone makes fun of your accent, or Reasons not to be outright mean to someone who is different from you in some tangible or intangible way.
Are these valuable lessons in how to get along in the world as it is? Or are they helping to perpetuate the world as it is? I don’t know. Maybe we just got an unfortunate batch of books this week. But I’m uncomfortable with the way kindness is presented repeatedly as a noble choice, rather than as the norm—as a given. Thoughts?
You also have to be careful with TV where being mean is shown to the be norm and funny too. We don’t watch a lot of TV and I screen it all.
Mean is more exciting I guess?
I remember when my first born– who is now 14 — was a toddler and I let him watch Disney’s “All Dogs Go to Heaven.” It was basically a story about the mafia (there’s a revenge plot in which dogs are murdered!)and I was so horrified.
I’m not an overly protective parent, but I thought — why introduce him to these themes so early in life?
Now my kids are 14, 12 and 9; I am as careful as I can possibly be about the computer, TV and books, but I feel that policing them– shielding them from the real world out there– is a battle I will inevitably lose.
We recently discovered totally by accident that my son had been on risque internet sites. Our computer is in a public thoroughfare in the house, but his curiosity led him to these places and that was that, he saw a whole lot of T & A.
My reaction? I didn’t get angry at him or even tell him it was wrong, in fact I told him I thought it was normal for him to be curious.
But I tried really hard to explain to him that it was important for him to let exciting experiences unfold in a natural way in his own life and not force them too early. I tried to explain that learning about things like love and sex could be fun and sweet, but that it could turn into a scary and intimidating experience on the internet. You have no control over what you will see and it might scare the living daylights out of you.
I want to preserve the ability of my children to find joy in discovery, not to be terrified by images they are not ready for.
Did it go right over his head? Has he explored the internet since? I don’t know. And I wish I had the answer to how to protect them from too much information too fast, but I think it’s almost impossible!
The Disney mafia. Gotta love that.
And not on fire, I hear you about television. I’m just not sure what to do when media doesn’t match up with the norms I want my kids to internalize. Avoid it? (Which, honestly, we do. We avoid a lot.) Let them see it but talk about it? (This is the route we go with the library books, but I suspect that by “discussing” it, I’m only emphasizing the thing I wanted to avoid! Way to go me!) Sigh.