I embarked on a relentless campaign to desensitize and toughen him up, which seems to be working. He can now watch the news, and has some pretty violent favorite movies that I think would distress many kids his age (I shield him from over-the-top gore and other troubling content). He remains intensely interested in ethical questions, but today in a lot of respects is an ordinary rough-and-tumble little boy who likes to play with toy weapons.
Can you expand on your desensitizing campaign? How did you go about it, and how did your son respond at the start? DS5 is still a no-Disney, no video game, no TV kid...
I just exposed him to increasing doses of reality and more mature themes in movies and other media. I've let my son watch lots of movies since before he could read well, and we would discuss different characters' motivations, why they sometimes felt compelled to do as they did, the difference between being aggressive and defending one's self or another, etc. At the beginning he probably would have had a problem with something pretty tame like "The Incredibles", but it was just a gradual process of expanding his boundaries. We don't play video games.
Oh, and another thing that occurred to me is that I imposed a strict moratorium on dumbed-down kids' programming. That wouldn't help a no-TV kid, of course.
I remember specifically banning some shows, like "Caillou", that I thought might encourage a weak self-perception.
