If a child is old enough to learn about the horrors of fast casual Italian food from Kentucky, there are few horrors the world has left that can harm them.
It makes me think of so many Black people on Twitter who talk about the age they first experienced racism. They usually point out if they were old enough to experience it, then white kids are old enough to learn about it. That has really stuck with me. Do I want my kid to stay innocent (i.e., ignorant) of the world around him or do I want him to be aware of the world around him and how people are affected by it? Good topic for today, Scott.
well yes, that's the point though isn't it? if you are shielding your child from information out of some false sense of decency in the name of innocence, you are making them ignorant as a price.
You did a good thing. People tend to over-infantalize children. They can handle a lot more than we tend to give them credit for. If they are old enough and curious enough to ask, they can usually handle a PG version of the answer. I have a picture of MLK Jr giving his "I Have a Dream" speech on my fridge that my 6yo drew. I asked her about it and she gave me a pretty good explanation of why he gave that speech and what it meant. I am grateful for her school for teaching her. It never would have dawned on me that she was old enough for a topic that heavy.
I think kids perceive a lot more of the world's flaws that we like to believe. It's probably futile to shield them from all of that and more useful to help them contextualize it and cultivate an appreciation for those who work tirelessly to address those flaws. It sounds like your child's teacher is on the right track. And so is Scott.
I think I think that broaching these subjects early is how we raise good people. I think I also think that shielding our children from serious topics is how we end up with grown children incapable of handling adult responsibilities. But I may be giving parents too much credit. Kids are awesome little creatures that surprise you with what they know every day.
What a hit this morning, hoping for a story about the Bengals and bandwagons and got this instead. I pay for this abuse.
Last year with a 2 year old really opened my eyes to what was really age appropriate with the death of my mom (non-covid related). Wife and I met were able to meet with a child psychologist before even telling our daughter so we knew exactly what to say. One of the recommendations was to use actual language: "died, body stopped working, cannot see her anymore," instead of the soft language: "passed, isn't here, went away." This allowed us to further discuss COVID and why we all need to wear a mask. To the point that my daughter will ask if I could put a mask on if I blow my nose so she "doesn't get sick daddy." Kids are sponges of knowledge and if we take a moment to listen and explain things to them in real language who knows, maybe they will save us all in the end.
Beautifully expressed as usual. Thank you for sharing your insight about what is age appropriate. I am a children’s librarian and oh boy, I’m unraveling with all of the book banning discussions going on across the country. Thanks for the shout out about 60 songs that explain the 90’s. I have told so many people about this podcast, and everyone is really enjoying it.
Makes perfect sense to me. I remember tons of talks like that with my parents over my childhood. No weird gnashing of teeth, hemming or hawing, just kind and straightforward. It's also how I developed a good sense of when an adult was lying to me or being shady, which is a nice side effect from a safety perspective. Children deserve kindness, but they also deserve honesty and respect.
And whewwwww, that picture. The Australian singer-songwriter Missy Higgins has a song called "Oh Canada" that she wrote in response to it, and she played it the one time I've been able to see her live. We were at the Birchmere outside of DC, with hundreds and hundreds of people, and her performance absolutely broke us all. It was over half a decade ago and I'm still choking up thinking about it. Just... whew.
Very lovely Scott; I remember snippets of the conversations like this my parents had with me, particularly around privilege. I remember once saying to my dad that we weren't rich, and him talking about all the things I had that not everyone else did, and telling me we were very rich and very lucky, and it has stuck with me all this time.
Ya, I never had a conversation with my parents about anything of substance and that's probably (in part) why I was an ignorant dipshit well into my 20s and probably into my 30s. So much wasted time.
My daughters are 18, 15 and 15 now. I'll never forget that my oldest daughter told her fellow first-graders about the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt. Her teacher was astounded. I thought everyone did this... We always talked about what was going on in the world.
The way I saw it, if I didn't tell them what was wrong with the world, how could I motivate them to change it?
Our local public media station just put out a four-part series about teaching about race and history, and they look at Germany as a contrasting example. The reporters visited Holocaust sites and talked to German students. It is worth a listen.
Dammit Scott, I didn't really need to ugly cry in my office this morning with students coming into to ask about the horrible math test I'm about to give them....
I am sure on some level that is normal, but before I had kids the kind of stories you were talking about towards the end of the post didn't really affect me all that much. Having kids of my own really opened my eyes/emotions to what was happening around the world and I also was really affected by those pictures. It put whatever empathy/sympathy I had on steroids.
This post was also at an interesting time because I had a little class discussion in my AP US History class about what age students should learn slavery and how they should learn it given all of the different discussion/proposed legislation here in Florida.
The general consensus was that students of all ages needed to hear about slavery, but the details of brutality of it could wait until middle school. In a similar vein they read "Night" in middle school about the Holocaust.
Whole family gathered for a covid-caused funeral this weekend. Lots of figuring out what is age-appropriate on the fly. My kid is too young to ask questions but I saw my cousins put on the hot seat a few times. Kids aren't dumb, man. I like the approach you took here. Plenty of adults settle for over-simplified narratives and it's easy to see how that might have started young.
There used to be a program in the UK called "John Craven's newsround" that was specifically aimed at giving kid-appropriate versions of the news, which showed some degree of taking children seriously without dropping information on them that they didn't need. I would think of that - seeing news about problems in Uganda, the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam - when I was trying to figure out not whether but how much to tell my kids about things that were going on.
In any case, talking about low wages and immigration with a six year old seems like a perfectly fine time to get them thinking about the world around them, and it can remind you to take a fresh look at the world around you - I would not set out for "poverty tourism," but when we went on a road trip in the southwest in '17, our daughters (14 & 12 at the time) got an eye-opener about what poverty looks like in the Navajo nation, as, to be frank, did I. Remembering to look both around and beyond yourself is a good instinct even without kids in the mix.
also, if you really want to bugger up rolling out bad news, take your 11 & 9 year old to the Anne Frank Museum and discover as you round the corner that there are a bunch of screens rolling film of death camps when they've never seen anything like that. Turns out they'd updated things a bit since I'd been there as a kid in the late 70s 😳😬
If a child is old enough to learn about the horrors of fast casual Italian food from Kentucky, there are few horrors the world has left that can harm them.
It makes me think of so many Black people on Twitter who talk about the age they first experienced racism. They usually point out if they were old enough to experience it, then white kids are old enough to learn about it. That has really stuck with me. Do I want my kid to stay innocent (i.e., ignorant) of the world around him or do I want him to be aware of the world around him and how people are affected by it? Good topic for today, Scott.
Innocence is ignorance. That's such a very clear way to put it.
ignorance has a much more negative connotation (to me, at least) than to say, perhaps, "uninformed".
well yes, that's the point though isn't it? if you are shielding your child from information out of some false sense of decency in the name of innocence, you are making them ignorant as a price.
and your explanation didn’t even begin to broach capitalism or fair wages! maybe give him a couple weeks before revisiting.
Sounds like a pizza discussion. Lends itself naturally to pie charts.
now this is the type of parenting I aspire to
You did a good thing. People tend to over-infantalize children. They can handle a lot more than we tend to give them credit for. If they are old enough and curious enough to ask, they can usually handle a PG version of the answer. I have a picture of MLK Jr giving his "I Have a Dream" speech on my fridge that my 6yo drew. I asked her about it and she gave me a pretty good explanation of why he gave that speech and what it meant. I am grateful for her school for teaching her. It never would have dawned on me that she was old enough for a topic that heavy.
I think kids perceive a lot more of the world's flaws that we like to believe. It's probably futile to shield them from all of that and more useful to help them contextualize it and cultivate an appreciation for those who work tirelessly to address those flaws. It sounds like your child's teacher is on the right track. And so is Scott.
I think I think that broaching these subjects early is how we raise good people. I think I also think that shielding our children from serious topics is how we end up with grown children incapable of handling adult responsibilities. But I may be giving parents too much credit. Kids are awesome little creatures that surprise you with what they know every day.
What a hit this morning, hoping for a story about the Bengals and bandwagons and got this instead. I pay for this abuse.
Last year with a 2 year old really opened my eyes to what was really age appropriate with the death of my mom (non-covid related). Wife and I met were able to meet with a child psychologist before even telling our daughter so we knew exactly what to say. One of the recommendations was to use actual language: "died, body stopped working, cannot see her anymore," instead of the soft language: "passed, isn't here, went away." This allowed us to further discuss COVID and why we all need to wear a mask. To the point that my daughter will ask if I could put a mask on if I blow my nose so she "doesn't get sick daddy." Kids are sponges of knowledge and if we take a moment to listen and explain things to them in real language who knows, maybe they will save us all in the end.
Beautifully expressed as usual. Thank you for sharing your insight about what is age appropriate. I am a children’s librarian and oh boy, I’m unraveling with all of the book banning discussions going on across the country. Thanks for the shout out about 60 songs that explain the 90’s. I have told so many people about this podcast, and everyone is really enjoying it.
Makes perfect sense to me. I remember tons of talks like that with my parents over my childhood. No weird gnashing of teeth, hemming or hawing, just kind and straightforward. It's also how I developed a good sense of when an adult was lying to me or being shady, which is a nice side effect from a safety perspective. Children deserve kindness, but they also deserve honesty and respect.
And whewwwww, that picture. The Australian singer-songwriter Missy Higgins has a song called "Oh Canada" that she wrote in response to it, and she played it the one time I've been able to see her live. We were at the Birchmere outside of DC, with hundreds and hundreds of people, and her performance absolutely broke us all. It was over half a decade ago and I'm still choking up thinking about it. Just... whew.
Very lovely Scott; I remember snippets of the conversations like this my parents had with me, particularly around privilege. I remember once saying to my dad that we weren't rich, and him talking about all the things I had that not everyone else did, and telling me we were very rich and very lucky, and it has stuck with me all this time.
Ya, I never had a conversation with my parents about anything of substance and that's probably (in part) why I was an ignorant dipshit well into my 20s and probably into my 30s. So much wasted time.
My daughters are 18, 15 and 15 now. I'll never forget that my oldest daughter told her fellow first-graders about the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt. Her teacher was astounded. I thought everyone did this... We always talked about what was going on in the world.
The way I saw it, if I didn't tell them what was wrong with the world, how could I motivate them to change it?
Didn’t see the name when I started reading this comment and was like “wait I know this person”
Lots I could write but not sure anyone wants to read an epic comment.
As such, good writing and think my take away is give kids responsibility which includes talking with them about things.
Great work, as usual, Scott
Our local public media station just put out a four-part series about teaching about race and history, and they look at Germany as a contrasting example. The reporters visited Holocaust sites and talked to German students. It is worth a listen.
https://louisvillepublicmedia.org/acriticalmoment/
Dammit Scott, I didn't really need to ugly cry in my office this morning with students coming into to ask about the horrible math test I'm about to give them....
I am sure on some level that is normal, but before I had kids the kind of stories you were talking about towards the end of the post didn't really affect me all that much. Having kids of my own really opened my eyes/emotions to what was happening around the world and I also was really affected by those pictures. It put whatever empathy/sympathy I had on steroids.
This post was also at an interesting time because I had a little class discussion in my AP US History class about what age students should learn slavery and how they should learn it given all of the different discussion/proposed legislation here in Florida.
Dave I'd be interested to hear what your kids had to say!
The general consensus was that students of all ages needed to hear about slavery, but the details of brutality of it could wait until middle school. In a similar vein they read "Night" in middle school about the Holocaust.
Whole family gathered for a covid-caused funeral this weekend. Lots of figuring out what is age-appropriate on the fly. My kid is too young to ask questions but I saw my cousins put on the hot seat a few times. Kids aren't dumb, man. I like the approach you took here. Plenty of adults settle for over-simplified narratives and it's easy to see how that might have started young.
There used to be a program in the UK called "John Craven's newsround" that was specifically aimed at giving kid-appropriate versions of the news, which showed some degree of taking children seriously without dropping information on them that they didn't need. I would think of that - seeing news about problems in Uganda, the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam - when I was trying to figure out not whether but how much to tell my kids about things that were going on.
In any case, talking about low wages and immigration with a six year old seems like a perfectly fine time to get them thinking about the world around them, and it can remind you to take a fresh look at the world around you - I would not set out for "poverty tourism," but when we went on a road trip in the southwest in '17, our daughters (14 & 12 at the time) got an eye-opener about what poverty looks like in the Navajo nation, as, to be frank, did I. Remembering to look both around and beyond yourself is a good instinct even without kids in the mix.
also, if you really want to bugger up rolling out bad news, take your 11 & 9 year old to the Anne Frank Museum and discover as you round the corner that there are a bunch of screens rolling film of death camps when they've never seen anything like that. Turns out they'd updated things a bit since I'd been there as a kid in the late 70s 😳😬