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

[shanaqui]

I was given the run of my parents' bookshelves and the library. There was stuff there that I wasn't old enough to read, and when I found it, I knew that. Kids self-police extraordinarily well -- if they're not ready for something, they're better than adults think at stepping back and saying, maybe later. It's not a hard and fast rule, sure, but telling a kid they're not old enough to read whatever tends to make them all the more determined to.

My parents even let me read the poisonous crap like Twilight, except that they would then sit me down and help me explain what was wrong with it (without judging me if I enjoyed it, simply guiding me to see the problems).

(Anecdote: my school librarian tried to confiscate my Famous Five books, telling me they weren't suitable. I nodded and said that for the unsuspecting, they could be a problem, because they were misogynistic, racist, biased against the working class, and basically intolerant of anything that was outside the norm when they were written -- not in those words, but you know, I explained that I knew what was wrong with them. That being said, I said, could I please have my books back, because I liked George and I wanted to be a boy too, like her.)

[fadeaccompli]

It worked... surprisingly well for me, actually. I was deeply invested in a kid in being a Smart Kid Who Read Above Her Age Level, and therefore would keep trying to read books that I didn't even like just to prove that I could read them. Including stuff that gave me nightmares. My parents told me that I couldn't read one particular author until a later grade--after a few instances of this with that particular author--and I rather gratefully put that author aside. I couldn't read him, so it was okay that I wasn't reading him. I didn't have to anymore. And then when I came back and read his stuff at the designated grade level, I was okay with it again.

So I can see how forbidding stuff would be a problem? But I can also see how it would work. It's going to depend on the kid and on the situation. Some kids will seek out stuff specifically because they're not allowed to read it. Some will hold off--especially if it's not a Not Ever, but a Not Now--and maybe come at it at a better time. Hard to say without knowing the kids.

[jazzfish]

The self-policing is mostly my recollection as well, although I read a few things (Lord Foul's Bane immediately comes to mind) before I was anywhere near ready for them. Then again I totally missed most of what was going on in there, so.

*snrk* I presume your librarian was flustered enough that she stopped trying to take the books away at that point?

[shanaqui]

Oh god, I think I did the same with Lord Foul's Bane, but I totally missed most of what was going on, too.

She was flabbergasted for a while, and then told me that I couldn't read the Famous Five books in school or write book reports about them, but she didn't take them off me on that occasion. I think I recall her complaining to my mother, too. Eyeroooooll.

[silmaril]

I was divided for a long time about what I would do about my very young cousins reading Twilight, and then I started reading Mark Oshiro's reviews of it (http://markreads.net) and it became clear: Let them read, read along with them, and point out every single thing that is unhealthy, weird but not in a good way, and scary about them.

"You can't read that" never ended either well or poorly for me; I was at home alone for hours every day, so it had no net meaning. A great deal of the stuff they were trying to keep from me went riiiiiight over my head, though, so no harm done.

[jazzfish]

Huh. That... is not a situation I had ever considered. Interesting!

[fadeaccompli]

I think it's really idiosyncratic. I've seen a lot of people talk about wanting to read books specifically because they were forbidden, but that didn't come up for me. And I think it's partly because my parents so very seldom rendered any books forbidden; it was assumed that if you had access to it, and could read it, it was appropriate enough, and that if we were upset we'd go to our parents for help.

Now, some of that is because the only English books available in that community were ones that had either been vetted by the school (the only place there was a big library in English) or brought in by other missionaries. But even so, I got to read The Door Into Fire with all its cheerful bisexual polyamory, and scar myself with a too-early reading of Animal Farm, and so forth. So when my parents actually said "Don't read this," it was unusual enough that I was willing to listen. And it was always phrased as a "...because you're not ready for it," not as "...because you should never read it ever." Which meant it was just delayed.

I mean. There was one time my parents got a book taken out of the school library, because I brought it home, my dad picked it up, and he was shocked. But that was Heinlein's Friday, and I am actually pretty okay with not having a book that starts with a gang rape and ends with "Yay, happily ever after with my rapist!" in a high school library. And my parents didn't get angry at me for reading it; they just asked if I wanted to talk about anything from it.

...to which the answer was no, because once again I was quietly, privately relieved that someone had removed the book from the possibility of my reading more. But I don't know how many kids took until college to realize it was okay to just not finish books, sometimes. Once I started, I felt obliged to finish, and I was really not liking that book.

Anyway. tl;dr version: "Boy howdy does it vary based on kid and circumstance."

[fadeaccompli]

Oh! And one more note. The author I wasn't allowed to read until junior high?

Ray Bradbury. Who my dad, at least, absolutely adored. But I was getting nightmares from his short stories (my introduction was "All Summer In A Day", which had me upset for two weeks straight), and I really needed a little more emotional fortitude before I could handle a lot of his stuff. I went on to read and enjoy his books a lot more when I came back to them in junior high.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

It's a tough decision to make. Speaking now as a teacher, not as a parent (I gave my kids free rein, with the result my daughter always asked for spoilers), if the kid wants to read it, she'll find a way. The downside of that is that the well-meaning parent has missed an opportunity to talk over the book with the kid. There might be a silence there, and a lack of trust. I saw it happen many times in my 20 years of teaching.

[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.

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

As Sherwood said, it's a tough call sometimes. Looking at my own reading history, there are books I encountered too early. _The Painted Bird_ comes to mind right away. There is one scene that still shows up in my most frightening nightmares--even though I was reading Stephen King at the same age (about eleven or twelve).

With Dev, it's been rather simple on that front, because reading has never been pleasurable for him. The question remains, though, of whether to restrict content. I think "filter" would be a better term--making sure he is seeing the work clearly. That's not so much as issue now since he's nearly 16, but it was a few years ago. Not only did we discuss the use of violence, but we talked extensively about the use of sex and sexuality. Too many parents, imo, do the former and avoid the latter.

Often it isn't the content, but the viewpoint of the reader/viewer that makes the difference. To my kid brain, King was obviously fiction so "scary scene" didn't translate into "possible event." Kosinski was real enough to be possible.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

All three of my kids were early readers and ahead of their grade levels, so I allowed them to read books that were older than their age bracket.

If there was anything potentially disturbing in a book they wanted to read, I read it first, discussed it with them, and we made the decision togther as to whether they thought they were ready for that type of material or not.

I always had the right to veto, but never had to.

Keep in mind that Iread Gone with the Wind before I was old enough to know what rape was. My parents wouldn't explain it to me and I used the dictionary to look it up. It in no way damaged me, so that's probably part of the criteria I used when making these decisions with my children.

[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.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I'm 100% with you here. As a kid, I know I read whatever I wanted, even if it was expressly forbidden -- but if it was forbidden, then I couldn't talk about it after, and I was reading Stephen King in the basement in my early teens, so.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

My parents never forbade me from reading things, but would advise me that I'd want to wait to read certain books until I was older.

[meghatronn.livejournal.com]

I, too, have mixed feelings on this subject and don't have any of the experiential wisdom that comes with parenting that might make me see differently. But the only discussion point I have that no one else has submitted yet--would you let a child of any age view an R-rated movie? Would you forbid it? Or would you allow them to see it only if you are in attendance? Is that different? Why or why not?

[jude.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the movie and the child. My girlfriend K regularly watches R-rated movies with her 14-year-old daughter, but they are movies K has seen before and is reasonably certain that B would enjoy. Personally, I'd have qualms about watching an R-rated movie with my child if it were the first viewing for me, but I am both notoriously squeamish about movies and also more stringent in my views about what's appropriate than anyone I can think of off the top of my head except possibly my own mother. XD That said, I know that many of my friends watched "inappropriate" movies at an early age and both understood and enjoyed them.

and it's also true that the MPAA (which assigns ratings) is a seriously problematic entity, so a rating of R doesn't necessarily prove anything to me about whether the movie in question is appropriate or not.

TL;DR: Ratings are an oversimplification, and don't substitute for knowledge of the child and the movie in question.

[jazzfish]

That all lines up almost exactly with my (less-vocalised) thoughts as well. Good to know I'm not completely off base!

[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?

[jazzfish]

'Filter' is a really excellent word/attitude. And that sounds like what to me is the ideal way to handle disturbing/not-age-appropriate content.

(I have not read The Painted Bird, and I'm not not sure I want to... :)

[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.

[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)

[meghatronn.livejournal.com]

Agreed that ratings are an oversimplification. I think in my head, I had an idea of a gorey, violence-filled flick--something that I would consider inappropriate for a pre-teen child or younger. For me, it hits home the idea of having to say no to children about certain things. Ideally, you would be able to say to your child in all circumstances, "I'm not sure you're ready, let's talk about it" or "Let's do it together and then debrief." Absolutely, you have to know the child and a solid trust relationship can enable the above conversations to occur. But the reality is, even the best of kids with even the best of parents who use the best attempts at dialogue can beg and whine and be hateful jerks, trying to get what they want--which does sometimes force parents to draw a line in the sand with a very firm NO.

I saw my first R-rated movie at 14, too. My mom and 10-year-old brother came with me :) But "True Lies" I think is pretty tame by today's standards. I'm getting increasingly concerned about how realistic special effects and video games are becoming and what impact that may be having on any of us who are seeing that, let alone children.

[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.

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

Your life will be none the poorer for skipping it, imo. :)

[jazzfish]

This is more or less the way I expected things to go. I seem to have expected it so strongly that seeing people who I mostly like and agree with considering doing it some other way has just made me confused.

[jazzfish]

That is an excellent parallel. (at least using the 'archetypal gory flick' you mention below.) I think... I think I'd probably draw a hard line there around thirteenish depending on the kid. And I'm not sure if I'm reacting more strongly to a visual depiction than I would to, I dunno, a Stephen King book or whatever.

I guess I think of reading as requiring a certain level of cognition to get what's going on? And if you're not able to handle the problematic stuff it's much easier for it to just go over your head.

Which doesn't address the 'hypersensitive kid' thing because I've never thought of that as a reason to keep someone away from something. I can see warning the kid: 'this is very intense and may freak you out,' that kind of thing. I expect the kid to be able to make her own judgement call after getting that warning. I also think that the way for a kid to a) learn her tolerances and b) maybe get a little less hypersensitive, is to make those judgement calls, and maybe be wrong sometimes. Maybe that's unfair or cruel of me? I don't know.

Blair above mentioned 'filtering' in the sense of providing a context to the kid when encountering disturbing / grown-up media. My gut feeling (still not tested against any real-world scenarios!) is that that's the best way to go about it. It's complex.

[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.

[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.)

[aamcnamara]

I am with the "tell the kid there might be disturbing stuff in it, let them make the call, talk about it with them afterward/during if they want" camp. My parents and sister sometimes censored my reading as a kid, which confused me majorly. Since I am a super-fast reader, they weren't reading everything before me, so I am pretty sure that more than half the time I was reading other books with the exact same content levels that they, uh, just hadn't noticed. XD But I could never tell them that, obviously, because maybe they'd start censoring my reading effectively and that would suck.

I did self-censor a lot, both in terms of books I wouldn't read and content going over my head in books I did read; and the first book I ever put down unfinished was when I picked up Mists of Avalon in my seventh-grade school library. (Ew, sex!)

...but then, I am the kind of person who is looking forward to my sister's/friends' children so I can corrupt them by giving them awesome books that are quote-unquote too old for them.

[sorcyress]

So, the only thing I can remember my mother explicitly saying I could not read was when I first got on the internet and found fanfiction.net and she told me I was not allowed no way never to read anything with more than a G rating --specifically because people are bad at tagging fics or rating appropriately, and she wanted to make absolutely sure I didn't stumble across anything troublesome.

At first I routinely ignored this, but somewhen I was thirteen or fourteen or so, I stumbled across a Mulan fanfic (rated PG13 or R or something) and encountered a fic in which the scribe-dude finds out Mulan is a girl, and blackmails her into fucking to keep him from telling anyone her secret. I only read a chapter, and it was one of the most horrifying¹ reading experiences I'd ever had. I just could not get it out of my head, or make the icky feeling go away.

That being said, my mother is a far more voracious reader than I am, and so she okay'd me to read a *lot* of adult fiction, some of it just as brutal (the gang-rape scene in the middle of Vanyel's trilogy, anyone?), because she knew what was in it and we could talk about it afterwards. I read all of Valdemar when I was between 11 and 14, and I remember mom saying "so, I know the Heralds have a lot of very casual sex, but they live in a different world and in the real world there are diseases and social stigma, do keep that in mind."

(And in the case of Vanyel, I have no memory of what I thought when I hit that rape scene the first time I read them, when I was...oh...twelve. It's one of the only Mercedes Lackey trilogies I didn't reread in high school --it took me until halfway through college to pick it up again, and when I did, I reacted significantly worse. Sometimes there is too young to worry about, and sometimes there is too old.)

In general, I think keeping communication lines open (and being savvy to what's in the books) is a much better solution than taking the books away. Back when I started watching PG-13 and R movies on my own, I was required to come home after and tell mom why they had gotten that rating. I think doing something similar with books --"The Hunger Games is disturbing because people are forced into a position where they have to kill each other for entertainment" is a valuable thing to do with children.

~Sor

1: Nothing beats Chuck Paluhnik's "Guts" for pure awful nightmare fuel. I was stuck on it for weeks at least --just couldn't get it out of my head. I was much too young to read it at the time, and I was already fifteen or sixteen!. I do recommend, but with the warning that apparently people faint every time Chuck reads it aloud, and I am not surprised.

[thanate]

I think this is the direction I'd go in with this also; I was never censored with reading material, although there were a handful of things that various people (both friends & parents) disrecommended for various reasons. ("You should wait until you're older and will get more of the literary references," is the one I particularly remember from my parents-- who at that point had already spoiled me for most of the humor in Gilbert & Sullivan by making it commonplace. But I digress.) The things I would have been happier not having read as a kid were either stuff for school (Animal Farm comes to mind) or not anything anyone else had volunteered an opinion on (mostly things with graphic sexual moments, and that was when I was old enough most people wouldn't have censored me anyhow.)

However... my parents took us to see Indianna Jones & the Temple of Doom when it came out, thinking it was going to be a fun action movie. As far as I know, my little brother didn't have any problem with it, but as a 5th grader I had night-terror style insomnia for the next nine months. I vividly remember being awake until about 4am the night after seeing it because every time I shut my eyes I kept seeing skulls, or that scene with drinking from the wrong grail.

Now, for me that was largely a visual media problem, and I don't think there was any real way that anyone could have predicted my reaction. But if as a parent one is in a situation to predict what's going to traumatize a kid, I think there's at least a slight obligation to try to head them off. The method is going to differ from kid to kid, of course, and I think a lot of times explaining in advance why it's horrible may work better than a ban-- at that point even if they do go ahead and read it they're a little more prepared for what they're getting into. But it depends on the kid, and I agree that there's potentially an element of safety in "My mom says I'm not allowed to read this yet," that isn't there in a more laid back approach.

[fadeaccompli]

Oh, yes. There were also times in purely social situations where I was deeply grateful for "My parents say I can't do that" as an excuse for staying out of something I didn't want to do anyway, and didn't feel comfortable articulating my fear or discomfort around. But I suppose that's a more general parenting issue, of which reading is sort of a subset.

[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.)