• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Books you'd never let your kids read....

The effect of a graphic scene of violence on a child of six is much different than one the age of 16. What is the difference? The teen has ten more years of life experience to know that this scene is made up, essential (or not) to the storyline. The younger child is more likely to be frightened or confused. As a parent, I must draw the line somewhere.
Click to expand...

This is a difficult line for any parent to walk, because scenes of violence surround us in our daily lives. Is it better to shield a child of six from violence, or help put it in context? Of course, it depends on the child. An involved parent will know, from daily interaction, how much or how little a particular child's psyche can manage. Sometimes the six year old is better equipped to handle the violence than the sixteen year old -- despite the extra ten years experience. I can only speak for myself, but I've watched too many parents shield so effectively that ten years of extra age had little effect on the ability to handle the harsh realities of life.

It sounds like you're doing a great job, Cajunmama, in being able to determine where that shield should be placed. It would be nice if other parents had the time (and, in some cases, the inclination) to do the same. For a lot of kids and young adults, 9/11 was the VERY FIRST instance in their lives that revealed that violence even existed. Truly! The media here is very selective on what is printed/broadcast about the rest of the world. Despite what is put out in the world press, it's not so much that Americans are callous or arrogant, as uninformed. We're wrapped up in 60 hour workweeks to pay the mortgage, getting dinner on the table, getting homework done, managing piano practice and soccer teams, housework and yardwork, and the time-consuming other details of daily life, plus trying to get five or six hours sleep a night. Weekends are nonexistent anymore, and holidays are filled with preparation and money crises, and catching up on missed cleaning chores and family visits.

If events don't show up on the nightly news or in the local newspaper, they don't exist. Unfortunately, they don't show up, even in large newspapers of major cities. The "World News" section is often the smallest section of the paper, a few scant pages of two-paragraph blurbs -- overshadowed by a dozen pages of football highlights, an entire section about the latest major murder "trial of the century" details out of California (and they all seem to be in California), local politics and the lives and loves of movie stars. :(

Without diligent searching on the web and a few cable channels, there is no POSSIBLE way for a parent to begin to expose a child to the difficult and sometimes frightening realities that exist in the world. It ends up such a shock in later years. Even for we diligent few...

Cathy
(Stepping off her own soapbox.)
 
Here in Austria they tend to show as pictures and movies of the War (mostly II) in school, including pics of stacks of dead people from concentration camps. These are really horrible but after that you don't get shocked so easily anymore. If you go to school here you also have a good chance to see a concentration camp from the inside and such a school trip gives you the creeps!
9/11 has horrible but my friends and I didn't get crazy about that. People starve to death or get killed by militia in 3rd world countries all the time and we get a lot of media coverage about that.

9/11 was different because it was broadcasted while it happened. From Africa you only see pictures of corpses afterwards.
 
Shielding kids from every possible danger is not a wise thing to do. If a child grows up in a protective bubble, then when they have to go out in the real world, they don't know what to do. As I said in my first post in this discussion, part of my job as a parent is to prepare my kids for the world. They watch the news with me and if they have questions, I answer them to the best of my ability. As far as managing time, it is a question of priorities and putting the most important things first.
 
cajunmama said:
When you have the awesome task of raising a child, I'm sure you will see a few things differently.
Click to expand...
that's what every parent says. in the same way, I'd have to become a drug addict to know it is destructive.
 
Being in a situation is a lot different than viewing it from the outside. Many drug addicts don't think they have a problem.
 
cajunmama said:
Being in a situation is a lot different than viewing it from the outside. Many drug addicts don't think they have a problem.
Click to expand...

the same thing could be said about parents, but don't take that as a personal attack. there was an earlier discussion here about parents raising children religiously and censoring books on the grounds that they're pagan or atheist. I agree, parents should protect their children from violence, but most of them don't. instead, they yell at them and prepare them to succeed in a society that will butcher them. if, like you said, society is the entire human race, then all the wars going on right now are just an outward expression of an inward state. unfortunately, we're not taught to see what creates violence. we don't see the division that religion, politics and nationalism creates.
 
Excellent point Bobby. Too many parents don't prepare their kids to survive in a tough world. I'll say it again, knowledge is power. I need my kids to know what it waiting for them out there and to make them ready for it, while not damaging them in the process. I, myself, am a product of inadequate prepatation on the part of my parents and the world ate my lunch. I'm alright now, but I am certain that if my folks had been more involved in my life growing up, I would not have been pregnant, unmarried and terrified at the end of my only year of college. As long as I have been a mother I have tried very hard to learn from my parents' mistakes.
 
The Bible.

The reason? Don't get me started.

Apart from that, anything would be Ok. I was watching/reading porn from 8. Didn't harm me. Infact, I beleive it helped. I never felt the need to rush into sex.

The same with horror films (from the age of about 4 this time). I don't feel to go around hacking people up, but the sight of blood doesn't bother me.
 
Why? It has a good message, a great ethics system, and is as entertaining as any other novel I've read.

Perhaps if you want to get rid of the religious dogma have them read the Jefferson Bible.
 
I will let my kids read anything. I do ask them to wait a bit on some books if I think the content is "too old" for them. My oldest is 11 and I am thinking the Drizzt books with their torture and some ritual sex on the part of evil characters would be a bit much. Drizzt is awesome, he's my hero, but the backdrop he shows up against... oy. :)

I also am much happier when my kids read as opposed to watching tv. TV is a very passive activity while reading engages the imagination. I think TV has it's place, sometimes you just want to veg a bit, but it needs to be kept in it's place. That's my .02 cents.

~Witch
 
True@1stLight said:
Why? It has a good message, a great ethics system, and is as entertaining as any other novel I've read.

Perhaps if you want to get rid of the religious dogma have them read the Jefferson Bible.
Click to expand...

My kids have already had the entire Bible read at them by their dad. They hate it. I have read it maybe 3 or 4 times and while it has some good info/ideas in it I really was not impressed with it overall. The parts that are entertaining to read are few and far-between and there are parts of it that are disgusting. I personally am very upset that my ex felt the need to read my kids passages about the incest between Lot and his daughters, (which was not apparently condemned by god) and the slaughter of "unbelievers" which had god's full approval. That is not the kind of ethics or world view I want to foster in my kids.
I am perfectly ok with them hearing turn the other cheek or treat others as you would be treated, love one-another, don't murder etc... but I teach them that anyway so I find the Bible unessesary.

~Witch
 
Ya, turn the other cheek origionally meant something different from what we take it to mean now anyway. In any case, I had forgotten about this post. I'm not sure that I was really judging entertainment value....I like philosophy so my idea of entertainment is obviously twisted ;)
Besides, who doesn't enjoy a good mass destruction?!?
 
Gosip Girl

I would most definately not let my kids read Gossip Girl. I'm 12 but if i had kids i would never let them read that book. it has some "stuff" in it.
 
im only 13 but if i had kids i would not let them read catcher in the rye and gossip girl. but i have read both of these. hehe... :)
 
k.k.

What's your mom got against Stephen King? I don't remember any content in Kings books that could be considered that damaging.

Maybe I'm missing something?
 
Earlier today I had the most amazing phone call from someone taking a survey. I am a writer, therefore I oppose censorship. It doesn't work anyway with the Internet. As I recall, there is a site somewhere wholly devoted to scanning every word in every book censored anywhere in the world, and posting it on the site.

Moral: If you want to get a kid to read a book, censor it.

Anyway, the caller - a very perky man with scary shades of Deep Tissue sales training ("Are you a recording?" I asked him.) began pounding me with very leading questions that started out inocuously enough with, "Do you have children?" And immediately segued into, "Do you want to protect them from the increasing degradation and filth of the entertainment industry?" After several questions like that, I told him no, and hung up the phone.

I didn't mean "No," literally, of course. I meant, "Take your campaign for censorship and shove it."

My mother let me read anything. She was of the opinion that if a kid is reading, that's better than a kid not reading.

I did a paper for a course I took not long ago, and selected censorship as my topic. I looked over the list of censored children's books, and discovered I had read virtually every one of them before the age of 20 - some of them were required reading in school. These included some of the most brilliant books I've ever read. I don't feel damaged by them. In fact, most of them were incredibly uplifting.

Yet there are parents who read this list, and make a well-intended effort to "protect" their children from the books on it because someone has convinced them they'd be bad parents if they did otherwise.

I let my sons read anything because I am of the opinion that if my kids are reading, that's better than not reading. I don't shelter them from things either because I don't want them naive and slam-dunked when they go out on their own. The have a supportive home, so they view the nastiness from a safe distance, but are allowed to see it so they can recognize it for what it is, and so we can talk to them and explain those kinds of choices are bad ones.

However, I also agree that seeing bomb building and satanism books would prompt me to action.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top