What are parents afraid of their kids reading?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the elephant in the room is that you think by censoring these books the child isn’t exposed to the problem subjects. Naïveté on a pretty startling scale.

I read Flowers in the Attic at age 9. If I had not, I would not have been exposed to child abuse of that nature or incest until I was older.

Ultimately, I was fine, but parents restricting content isn't always naive. There are shades of grey here.

Really? You don't...read the news?

[Anonymous]

With my tween, who wants a little boy-girl stuff in books, I've been making sure the relationships are age appropriate. She's not ready for 50 Shades or A Court of Thorns and Roses. Absolutely not

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I don’t know, Karen. Why didn’t you intervene and demand to know?

Jesus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the elephant in the room is that you think by censoring these books the child isn’t exposed to the problem subjects. Naïveté on a pretty startling scale.

I read Flowers in the Attic at age 9. If I had not, I would not have been exposed to child abuse of that nature or incest until I was older.

Ultimately, I was fine, but parents restricting content isn't always naive. There are shades of grey here.

Really? You don't...read the news?

NP. My kids certainly were not reading about incest in the news at age 9. Or even now as teenagers, really. What news are your kids reading?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the elephant in the room is that you think by censoring these books the child isn’t exposed to the problem subjects. Naïveté on a pretty startling scale.

I read Flowers in the Attic at age 9. If I had not, I would not have been exposed to child abuse of that nature or incest until I was older.

Ultimately, I was fine, but parents restricting content isn't always naive. There are shades of grey here.

Really? You don't...read the news?

You think 9 year olds are reading graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse and incest in the news?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:May be it was a shitty book. The amount of junk written for kids is just insane. I can totally relate to curating the flow. I can't do much about whatever my child picks from the school library, but at least I have some control over public library check outs to introduce books that I would consider a must.

It’s only going to get worse now with AI authoring books

[Anonymous]

Some of the YA “fantasy” books are wildly inappropriate. Seriously bizarre stuff that surely contributes to mental problems in kids and teens if they take to those and read many of them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the elephant in the room is that you think by censoring these books the child isn’t exposed to the problem subjects. Naïveté on a pretty startling scale.

I read Flowers in the Attic at age 9. If I had not, I would not have been exposed to child abuse of that nature or incest until I was older.

Ultimately, I was fine, but parents restricting content isn't always naive. There are shades of grey here.

Really? You don't...read the news?

no karen my 9 year old doesnt

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the elephant in the room is that you think by censoring these books the child isn’t exposed to the problem subjects. Naïveté on a pretty startling scale.

I read Flowers in the Attic at age 9. If I had not, I would not have been exposed to child abuse of that nature or incest until I was older.

Ultimately, I was fine, but parents restricting content isn't always naive. There are shades of grey here.

Really? You don't...read the news?

At age 9? I sure hope not.

[Anonymous]

As others mentioned, when your child reads significantly above grade level it may be a concern. Librarians at DCPL and staff at independent bookstores such as Politics & Prose were excellent at making suggestions for my voracious reader, especially when she was younger. It became almost a game of "Test the librarian / bookstore staff" for a while but we never censored what DD read and she still reads a broad range of books today. She is now 14.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the elephant in the room is that you think by censoring these books the child isn’t exposed to the problem subjects. Naïveté on a pretty startling scale.

I read Flowers in the Attic at age 9. If I had not, I would not have been exposed to child abuse of that nature or incest until I was older.

Ultimately, I was fine, but parents restricting content isn't always naive. There are shades of grey here.

Really? You don't...read the news?

At 9?!

The news wasn't like it is now, obviously. If you didn't sit down and watch it or read the paper you didn't see it. What 9-year old was sitting down for the nightly news every day?

[Anonymous]

Is this really that confusing, OP? Do you not read? There are lots of topics young kids are not mature enough for, regardless of reading level. There are lots of topics that may be perfectly fine for most kids, but for that kid, because of their specific developmental stage or life experiences, would find upsetting or inappropriate.

I never thought I would be the parent who banned Garfield but it turns out John spends a lot of time dieting and my 8 year old for whatever reason latched onto that and suddenly every meal was a conversation about counting calories and what the scale is going to look like tomorrow. So I took away Garfield for a little while. I'm sure lots of parents were judging me in the library when I had to keep telling him no on Garfield but they don't have to eat breakfast with us.

[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

Yep.Same for me. I did not need my first exposure to sex to be a violent rape scene followed by a forced backalley abortion. I was 10. I could have done without reading Dolores Claiborn at 12, too. Not every book is for every reader. It's fine to steer your kids away from books they do not have the maturity to handle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1