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

[salzara-tirwen.livejournal.com]

I'm a little worried about how this is going to turn out with my brother's kids, actually. Denephew* is probably seven this year (I keep forgetting) and Deniece is going to be three.

Debrother** and Desisterinlaw are raising them in this style that utterly baffles me... he's a perky optimist by nature but has no real idea of the darkness of things, and she probably does understand things a little better but is too nice to disillusion him.

So they're raising their kids in such a sweetness-light-fluffy-bunnies attitude that Denephew doesn't know that meat comes from animals. I don't even know if he's ever seen a whole fish in the grocery store. They eat meat, yes, but they just haven't told him yet.

I've been rewatching Avatar:TLA and realizing that my brother probably wouldn't allow Denephew to watch it because it's (in an acceptable-to-kids way) quite explicit in showing where food comes from. No blood and guts, but Sokka's always running after tasty meat-creatures and going off hunting for food.

And Demother agrees with them. She said "well of course farm kids need to know but Denephew doesn't" in that sneering voice that actually shocked me. It's something you'd expect some rich snob to say. I know she likes to pretend that meat grows on styrofoam, but she's old enough to know it doesn't.

It's a conversation I haven't been able to have because I can't stand my brother's attitude about things. What do they tell him about why there are bones in the meat? What happens when he goes to a science museum and makes that connection between the skeletons and the Christmas turkey?

What happens when he hits a major growth spurt and suddenly refuses to eat major sources of protein because of the shock of learning that fluffy animal friends are also tasty meat?

What happens when he learns about factory farming? It shocked me in college and I at least already knew that meat is dead animals.

But we're not allowed to have serious conversations in my family, and certainly not allowed to question anyone's parenting methods. Life is fluff. Meat appears from nowhere.

It's a fundamentally dishonest attitude to the world, not just the food thing but that entire worldview, and it's caused a fundamental disconnect between me and my brother that I'm not even allowed to explain.

Yay family.

(*Not his real name of course)
(**why stop a good running gag ahead of its time)

[jameshroberts.livejournal.com]

One of the most depressing things about our society is that so many people think that water comes from the faucet and that food comes from the grocery store.

[jazzfish]

So they're raising their kids in such a sweetness-light-fluffy-bunnies attitude that Denephew doesn't know that meat comes from animals.

I just what is this I don't even

LISA: "Dad! Bacon and barbecue and ham all come from the same animal!"
HOMER: *pats Lisa on the head* "Of course they do, Lisa. One magical animal."

Dear gord. I don't think I have anything I can possibly add to that, other than my appalled face and my "these people are idiots" Stormtrooper icon.

(and amusement at a good running gag.)