What are parents afraid of their kids reading?

[Anonymous]

So I was at the library the other day and a girl who looked about 11 years old came in with a woman who was presumably her mom. She picked out a book for school her and brought it to her mom and her mom kept insisting the book is inappropriate and wouldn't let her check out the book. Just why. What the fuсk was she afraid of her kid reading? It's not like she was checking out a porn magazine.

[Anonymous]

Maybe, like me, she was reading her mom's trashy paperbacks at that age? In any event, I never censored what my kids read. I was just happy they were reading.

[Anonymous]

I do not censor what my tween reads but I do worry about violence and suicide depictions in YA books.

[Anonymous]

Hunger Games. My 10 year old asked about it recently and after I told him the plot he was like "thats horrible I would have nightmares!". But he was going to read it before he knew the plot because he'd heard other kids were.

Maybe some young adult books involving suicide. Some are pretty dark. If you have a sensitive kid, its not something id want them to dwell on at that age.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. That book haunts me decades later.

These are the things that immediately come to mind. Im certain there are thousands others. All media comes in a variety of themes. Just like you wouldn't want an 11 year old to watch all movies, or sit in on all group discussions, or view all paintings, books are the same.

What you put in your head stays there. Its Ok to tell 11 year olds they arent ready for particular books.

[Anonymous]

This is an odd question. Are you not familiar with the fact that books are written about anything and everything? Whatever topic she didnt want her 11 year old exposed to is what that book was about. Sex, rape, drugs, suicide, violence, death, who knows maybe it was conservative economics or new age philosophy. You can of course debate which of these is worth censoring or not, but without knowing the exact book, you cant judge. Its normal for parents to want to understand what their child is consuming in all forms.

[Anonymous]

Someone gave mine the Hunger Games books when she was in second grade. I knew if she read them she'd have nightmares - she wasn't yet mature enough for them. I put them on a high shelf and told her when she was older and they wouldn't give her nightmares she could read them. I gave them to her in 5th grade, I think.

[Anonymous]

I think it depends on whether your kid is reading at grade level or not. When I was in elementary school, everybody (teachers, parents, school librarians, public librarians etc) was so excited about how far above grade level my reading skills were, and kept challenging me with “harder” material that I was definitely not emotionally or psychologically ready for. In hindsight I was definitely very behind on the social-emotional scale. There are things I read when I was eight, ten, twelve….that just shattered my heart, terrified me, made me feel uncomfortable and alone, and therefore ashamed, and have stuck with me through the decades. As a kid I was unable to express these feelings, and adults just saw a “very smart” young girl who understood and was stoic and seemed unbothered and “wise beyond her years” etc. about what she was reading. I wish I’d had more guardrails

[Anonymous]

That book Lawn Boy

[Anonymous]

There are some YA series and graphic novels I don't get for my tween DD because I don't like how they depict girls and women. The graphic novels/manga in particular, you have to pay attention -- real Japanese manga can include some very degrading images and treatment of girls and women.

When she is older I will let her get what she wants at the library or buy with her own money, but right now if I'm the one paying or taking her to the library, I'm not endorsing material that I find personally degrading to both of us.

I wouldn't get this stuff for a boy either. And yes we are having conversations about WHY some of this content is degrading and why as women we have to care about how media depicts women and girls.

I hate this world sometimes.

[Anonymous]

Mind your business OP

[Anonymous]

I don’t know but sounds like a great mom for taking her DD to the library and for being aware of the content she is reading

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it depends on whether your kid is reading at grade level or not. When I was in elementary school, everybody (teachers, parents, school librarians, public librarians etc) was so excited about how far above grade level my reading skills were, and kept challenging me with “harder” material that I was definitely not emotionally or psychologically ready for. In hindsight I was definitely very behind on the social-emotional scale. There are things I read when I was eight, ten, twelve….that just shattered my heart, terrified me, made me feel uncomfortable and alone, and therefore ashamed, and have stuck with me through the decades. As a kid I was unable to express these feelings, and adults just saw a “very smart” young girl who understood and was stoic and seemed unbothered and “wise beyond her years” etc. about what she was reading. I wish I’d had more guardrails

THIS. I have a 3rd grader who reads at a middle school level. She reads grade level stuff but she churns through it fast and she needs longer, meatier books to keep her interested and occupied with reading. It's hard because I'm not going to read every freaking YA novel myself, so I read a lot of reviews, get recommendations from friends with older kids where I can vet for specific content based on what I think she'd be ready for, etc. There are lots of books that would be okay for a 12 year old but not for an 8 year old. I will say that DD actually will speak up sometimes when she feels a book feels too adult for her, but I feel like I need to be involved too, talking through it, it's not fair for an 8 year old to just have to navigate that on her own.

I was also a super advanced and voracious reader at a young age and I read a ton of inappropriate stuff, mostly from my parents home library, at age 8/9/10. Including my mom's extensive collection of trashy crime novels that included violent descriptions of like prostitutes being murdered. And my mom had read those books and knew I was reading them and didn't even stop to have a convo with me about what was in them. The ridiculous part is my mom was super uncomfortable talking to me about sex or puberty or relationships, too, so basically she knowingly let me learn a lot about those topics from trashy novels but was too embarrassed to talk them through or even check with me on how I was handling all that adult content.

I guess the cool thing now is to just let your kids consume whatever media they want but I feel like this is really lazy parenting and it's worth it to put in a little more effort than that.

[Anonymous]

Maybe it depends on your kid. My 4th grade boy read all the Hunger Games and Harry Potter, and didn't express any problem with them.

[Anonymous]

MYOB, OP. Were you hoping we’d all become hysterical and yell “DRAG QUEENSSSSS!!!!!”

Plenty of YA content can be too much for kids. See previous posts in this thread for examples.

[Anonymous]

I’m a school librarian in a blue part of NoVA and I’ve had parents email with complaints about books with transgender characters a couple of years ago, when Moms for Liberty first started making a fuss a couple of years ago. I was able to de-escalate those situations so they didn’t turn into formal challenges. I also had the parent of a male fifth grader complain about Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, a Newbery honor title, because it depicted a girl in foster care who got a tattoo in 4th grade and whose mother went to jail for blowing up a hotel room where she was cooking meth. She had her son stop reading after the 2nd chapter. (Mind you, this is just the circumstance the character finds herself in; it’s not part of the plot.) The title actually tackles much more serious topics than that, most notably CSA (addressed in an age appropriate manner, not graphically) but he didn’t read that far. I praised her for having open communication with her son and for him knowing himself well enough to know he wasn’t comfortable reading further. She was concerned that the title shouldn’t be in an elementary library at all but I encouraged her to read the whole book before coming to that conclusion. Her main gripe was that those circumstances (CSA, foster care, parental substance use) was too “fringe” for kids at our school, and I disabused her of that assumption. With 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys experiencing CSA, that book can be a lifeline for kids to know that they are not alone, that it is not their fault, and that there are adults who can help. Statistically speaking, there are also kids in every class who have parents with substance use disorders, parents who are incarcerated, and classmates in foster care. So the book was not for HER kid, but it might be (and is) for many other kids at our school…to understand, to develop empathy, and/or to see mirror for an aspect of their own experiences. The mom didn’t take it further.

I am always pleased that parents are noticing what their kids are reading and fully support any parent who thinks that content may not be right for their own child (especially when they have such a good relationship that the child talks about it with the parent…thats awesome.) I find it really troubling when some parents want to control all books in a library collection because they don’t like them personally, though. (With the exception of flagging books that may be obsolete, inaccurate, or contain racist, sexist, or otherwise abusive language.) And I’m grateful that, thus far, I have not had parents go further than their own appropriate role of guiding their own child’s reading selections and sharing concerns about the suitability of content.