parenting baffles me

[jazzfish]

... good thing I don't have to do it.

Elseweb a friend asks, heavily paraphrased, "my preteen kid wants to read Hunger Games. i'm not letting her right now, because she's hypersensitive and it would freak her right the heck out. thoughts?"

Which to me sounds entirely wrong-headed. I was brought up with free rein in my reading material: if I could reach it, I could (try to) read it. The notion of telling a kid "no you can't read that you're not ready for it" is foreign to me. I could see "it's kinda disturbing and might be a little old for you; give it a try and we'll talk about it during/after, and if you're too freaked out it's totally okay to stop." But saying "you can't read that"... does that ever end well?

This is apart from the question of poisonous drek like Twilight, which someone else brings up in comments and to which I have no easy answer.

Thoughts?

(I'm not identifying the friend because I don't want to be That Guy With No Kids Who's Telling Her How To Raise Hers; likewise, I'm not asking her this directly because I don't know how to ask that without either sounding like That Guy Etc or making it her job to educate me on the nuances of parenting that I'm missing.)

Comments

[sometimerose.livejournal.com]

Huh. I would have completely agreed with you before I had kids, but now I have a hypersensitive four year old and I decide all the time what she can't read. I actually did this less a year ago then I do now, because I didn't initially realize this was a problem and I read her a few things that made her very uncomfortable. Soon I found that I would read her something and she would ask me to stop halfway even though I knew it was going to turn out mild because she didn't trust that I wouldn't read her something that would "freak her out." Now I can tell her "I think this is going to be okay" and she trusts me to do that because she knows that I don't (generally) read her things that disturb her (although I do try to push her boundaries sometimes). So should she at four years old be responsible for knowing in advance without reading the material whether or not she can handle it or is that my job? What about at ten? Mind you, in my case my daughter actually CAN'T read, so it's rather that I decide what to read to her, but when does that stop? Where is the line between not selecting something that will disturb your child and not letting them select something for themselves that will disturb them? I don't honestly know and I do have kids (so it isn't because you don't!), but while my previous English teacher self was completely opposed to censorship of any kind, my parent self knows there are things my child can't handle, so I am still deciding how I feel about all of this and it's more complex than I used to realize.

[jazzfish]

For a four-year-old that makes a lot of sense. (And yay for having that trust, both because it is awesome in itself and so you can push her a little when appropriate!) It's when the kid gets to ten, and twelve, and fourteen, that it gets murky for me.

I think I tend towards "if you're old enough to ask the question you're old enough to hear [some version of] the answer," with a side helping of "come and talk to me about it if it gets too rough." But then I'm speaking as a guy who's exceedingly unlikely ever to have to answer for the consequences of that position. So I have no idea if that's the (or even "a") right answer. It /is/ complex.

The other thing is, at a certain point the kid will find the book anyway, so is it better to be open and prepared to mitigate any damage rather than saying 'no' and having the kid not talk to you about it?

[sometimerose.livejournal.com]

Clearly you don't want to say you can't do this in a way that kids will sneak off and do it anyway. But it isn't one or the other because parenting isn't either authoritarian (I said NO) or permissive (you do whatever you like). It can also be I'm telling you that from my experience this is not right for you right now. What can we agree to that makes more sense (read it together, pick an age where we do think it's okay, etc.) and that we are both on board with? Just because she said she didn't want her kid reading something doesn't mean she plans to draw a line in the sand, either.

I expect I will tend toward let's read it together and talk it through for most things, but I am just not as sure as I used to be about the read whatever you like with no filters view.