Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion OOPS-- miscalculation!

I think that one is horribly sad as well. Re the next post, we've never been able to watch King Kong at my house either which ticks dh off tremendously. I think that the kids, and I, both have a harder time watching people abuse sentient beings who cannot defend themselves. Oddly enough, both of my girls were fine with Bridge to Terabithia and actually even watched Schindler's List without horrible trauma. What they have a harder time with is things like King Kong which has become an arguement with dh as the kids have referred to it as "a horrible story of animal abuse."

Despite discord at home w/ dh about this, we've just turned things like that off mid-movie and never finished them. I can see how, in the OP's situation, it's too late for that and Bridge to Terabithia kind of throws the death at you by surprise. We generally found that the type of existential angst caused by things like that couldn't be smoothed over with lies about how something like that would never happen and feeling helpless made it worse when dds were young. I tried to give dds' ways to effect changes in the horrible things they learned of and felt powerless over -- like raising money for genocide victims for instance.

I'm trying to think if there is a way to offer her power over this. Without involving her with people who've lost loved ones, which might make her dwell more, would it be possible for her to volunteer some time for people or animals who don't have someone who loves them as much as she does? Visit old people in nursing homes who don't have family around? We've redirected some of the concern my dds' have about animal abuse to volunteering at the humane society so they feel like they are doing something for those who aren't taken care of even if they can't rescue pit bulls in fighting rings, for instance.

Cricket,

So glad you posted about King Kong as well. I never looked at it that way but it makes sense - the injustice to the innocent and defenseless. And isn't it kind of amazing that they see a 50ft. ape as defenseless? I imagine they empathize with others who do not have the power to be heard/understood or to control what goes on in their lives.

They did cry at Bridge to Terabithia as well but more sad and teary eyed. King Kong had them crying and begging "Why, Mommy?"

I love that you are involving your children in activities that help them feel like they can make a difference and stand up for others who cannot stand for themselves.

DS5 was terribly crushed when his Siberian hamster died. That was his first introduction to death. He's always been philosophically interested in ideas concerning death, isolation, etc. but that made it personal.

As for media, he's totally fine with what most people would think are high levels of sadness-inducing topics. I think this is because since he was very small, I let him watch a lot of movies with advanced themes. I shield him from gory stuff, but that's about it.

Both of my DDs have been incredibly sensitive. I still vividly remember DD11 sobbing when she watched Horton Hears a Who as a toddler. She couldn't understand why the mean monkeys would steal the Whos from Horton. We had to make a big deal when we returned that one to the library. DD11 seems to have grown out of most of it. DD9 still is incredibly sensitive. She gets stressed out in movies when the kids are in trouble or something bad happens. She would never be able to sit through the Terabitha movie -- she would walk out or hide behind the couch. We have to be very careful when they show movies at school as a "treat" (read torture for her). We have to talk her through the whole story ahead of time so that she will have time to process the outcome.

Yes, exactly. I think it was just suddenly, shockingly personal; at this point, DD's experience with bereavement and grief was quite limited. My DD is ordinarily the same kind of child. She's very pragmatic, and while she is extremely empathetic and compassionate, she just doesn't dissolve into a puddle of tears over much of anything. She copes very well with heavy-weight emotional content-- even things that many adults struggle to process.

We truly had no idea that the movie would bother her. She just hadn't ever looked at it quite that way, and her (correct) conclusions really overwhelmed her.

She has known that she could die since she was a toddler (she has nearly died). She'd not considered what that would be like from another's perspective, though, and the movie unlocked that awareness all of a sudden; the result was horrified epiphany. Her precocious understanding of her own mortality made it a terrifyingly plausible scenario, as though a crevasse had opened at her feet. Afterwards, we talked a great deal about the choices we make to keep her safe, and why we want her to make those things a habit, too. We do what we can and then we have to let go of of the 'what ifs,' because life is for living. This seemed to be enough for her, but she definitely took a while to return to equilibrium.

I think that others are right-- it's a matter of cognitively having the ability understand that there are some things which just can't be made "okay" in any sense, but without the relative maturity to bear that understanding with the composure and life experience of adulthood. Some truths just have to be held inside like bitter little pills of understanding, without sweetening them to make it easier. (Human beings are capable of terrible acts of cruelty and savagery, we can't love without vulnerability, there are many things we cannot ever hope to control, and there are things that cannot be "taken back" once done.)

Then again, the world might be a very different place if more adults had full cognitive awareness of those things, too.
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Ahhhh, yes. Santa/The Tooth Fairy/EB-- when our GT children ask us questions, we are so conditioned to assume that means that they are ready to hear the answers, and sometimes we get it wrong. I know someone else whose 9yo son was traumatized by learning the 'truth' about Santa, as well. It took them a couple of years to get him past it, and they have horrible guilt about not understanding how devastated he'd be by having his belief stripped from him.

It's a good reminder that my DD may converse like a little adult-- but she is still very much a child.

So, DS sorted out the hoof-to-table thing way early. He pointed at a fish in the grocery store at nine months, and asked "ded?" Then there were a few other reasons we knew he'd gotten the concept. But he didn't seem bothered by it.

Then, recently, we went to the whale exhibit at a local museum. There was a cartoon of some maori myth that involved someone chopping a piece off a living whale and eating it. Apparently that was the missing peice, because half a lifetime after the original grocery store moment, we had this long drawn out thing about death and eating meat. He's over it now. Today was the day of distinguishing "meat" from "meet." I have never heard so many "meat" puns in a day. He also sorted out that his feet were meat, so... I guess that means he's got the whole she-bang. Or at least the idea of how thewhole she-bang goes together.

-Mich

This thread was making me think about all the ooops moments! and how different my kids are. My DS could never watch disney movies or any movies where a character got yelled or in trouble. he would run from the room covering his years. My biggest oops was when he was in kindergarten i was singing "sunrise, sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof. He totally lost it. he started crying and got so hysterical I had to put him to bed early. Now, my DD....was home from school sick during kindergarten and was watching Jurrasic Park...crying during the scene where the kids were being attacked by the Trex, She said "the poor dinosaur....he's just hungry...."

Also got me thinking about dealing with my kids existential crises. they seem so young to be dealing with such things. and so wholeheartedly effected by it. My DS at 6 gave a eulogy at his great grandma's memorial service but the crises didn't seem to hit him until about 6 months later.

We would often need debriefing time after a movie or story that was intense and would have to discuss the whys of the characters.



I change it up as kid knows some author/writer wrote it. So we discuss why the author made character do this/that or why the director made the actors show how they feel about this/that.

We try to make it less "real" as it isn't "real". But yes, kid has had some reactions but now that time has passed, phew, all seems ok for now.

We had something like this happen last night, and I was completely taken off-guard, since for the last couple of years, I can reason DS through such things, as long as he's healthy and not in some crisis mode from something.

DS9's wrestling coach was giving the kids their end of year trophies, and made a speech about each kid as he presented them. When DS9 came up, he said that DS was "like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" -- he's the kid who reads all the time and wins the spelling bee, but he's ferocious on the mat.

Afterwards, DS9 asked me (not surprisingly) if he could read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I told him I hadn't read it myself, but I would think it might be a bit scarier than he would like. He asked me to explain, and I told him it had murders in it. He told me that he's read other books with murders (e.g., Harry Potter, LoTR, Agatha Christie) and hasn't been scared. I told him I thought this might be different, but I could check it out. He asked for a synopsis and I told him my recollection of the storyline albeit from the old movie -- Dr. Jekyll is a good person and a scientist. He takes some kind of potion/drug that he's concocted and unexpectedly turns into a monstrous man that they call Mr. Hyde. In response to further inquiries from DS9 asking what makes it scary and what kind of monster Mr. Hyde is, I explained that I believe Mr. Hyde kills people. DS9 lost it saying how could coach compare him to that.

I explained that the term "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is commonly used to refer to people who have unexpected combinations of traits. The coach was trying to say that while many people may stereotype kids who like to read and learn as mild-mannered, anyone who thinks they'll have an easy time wrestling DS9 because he's "the kid with his nose in a book all the time" will be in for a huge surprise, because DS9 is a fierce competitor. I explained that the coach sincerely meant it as a compliment. DS9 couldn't stop crying, and had a horrible time getting to sleep. He said he never wants to read the book, not because of the murders, but because a good person turns into someone so bad, and someone had compared him to that.

Oh dear, Mama22gs, hugs to you and your son!

In terms of Oops moments, In retrospect letting DS watch The Little Mermaid was a big mistake. He has taken the fish are friends not food rule WAY to far. For several years, if DH and I had fish for dinner, he would scream and then fall apart because we were eating Nimo's friends. No amount of reasoning helped. Today, he still won't eat fish but at least manages not to gag if he sees it on the table.

In my family I am constantly ridiculed for leaving the theater in the middle of Pete's Dragon when I was 13. (of course, I left in the middle of almost every movie they ever took me to see.) To this day, I haven't been able to get them to realize that the movie made me too sad, NOT scared. Reading the above posts, I am better able to understand why I reacted the way I did to movies