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

[jude.livejournal.com]

There was exactly one time in my life when my father took a book out of my hands, and it was so startling I remember it ~20 years later. He was reading The Beans of Egypt, Maine, and as was my habit I picked it up to see what it was like. He came over and said "I have never done this before, and I will probably never do it again, but you are not allowed to read this at your age." (I was eight or nine, I think.) He didn't tell me a lot of details at the time -- in more recent conversations I found out that it's about poverty, violence, sex, and their various unpleasant intersections. It was, apparently, the most depressing book he had ever read. I still haven't read it, so I can't tell you my own impressions...

I think in your friend's case it's different, since this is a book series that is already a really popular movie and the kid probably has some idea of what it's about. I really didn't -- I was just curious about what Dad had brought along to my violin lesson, and was happy enough to put it down when he told me it would be upsetting. (If it had been my sister, he would probably have had to have a much longer discussion.)

I think that in general, you're right. There's actually an NPR segment about this subject, where adults discuss adult books they read as preteens and how it affected them. I wish I could remember the name of the segment... it's probably in All Things Considered.

I think that with regard to things like Twilight, a better way to go is to talk to the kid about how extremely problematic the whole thing is, preferably with quotations (although that means having to slog through it yourself... although intellectual honesty does kind of demand that anyway, I suppose. XD) Let them read it, but give them enough information to make it more of a forensic exercise. As gross as it all is, the fact that people DO think it's romantic and sexy is a really important indicator of The Times In Which We Live -- and learning to spot those kind of things and react to them appropriately is an important tool to give kids, IMO.

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

The NPR segment is "Risky Reads," I think.

[jazzfish]

... wow. Yeah, I wouldn't let a kid read that either, I think.

It does seem like this is three different things: the Adult, the Disturbing, and the Just Plain Bad. :) There's some amount of overlap (especially in the first two categories) but they seem to call for different strategies. And some amount of this is of course the point at which the parent stops being a gatekeeper; somewhere between 'ten' and 'thirteen' seems like the right time, depending on the kid.

It is more complex than I'd thought.

[jude.livejournal.com]

yeah. I think in your friend's case, what I'd do is have a conversation along the lines of "Look, I don't think it's a good idea for you to read this yet. Here are things I know about your temperament, and here are things I know about what is graphically discussed in the book. If you still REALLY want to read it, okay, but (a) if you get really squicked, remember that you don't have to keep reading, and (b) please don't feel like you have to process everything all by yourself and can't come to me because I'm telling you I don't think it's a good idea for you to read it." With a possible addition of "If you start having nightmares, we are going to revisit this discussion, with an option of my putting your further reading on pause for a year or two."

I think by 10, a kid is old enough that the conversation stops being "I am the parent, so this is how it is" and turns more into "I have more experience than you, so here is information I have that you may want to consider." Especially in a situation like this, where the prospective negative results don't seem to be seriously dangerous (unless the kid is psychologically fragile enough that they would fixate to the point of actual mental damage? but it doesn't sound like that's the case here.)