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DS6: People keep telling me I'm too young to read Harry Potter.
Me: Hmm. Like who?
DS6: Mrs. X. She saaid I shouldn't read it. She says I can't understand it.

Guess who Mrs. X is?


No, not his teacher. (She would never say that.) The effing SCHOOL LIBRARIAN.

Lady--((( censored remark)))

(I told him, "If Mrs. X ever gives you trouble about books, ask her to talk to your teacher about it." Trust me, his teacher is on board, and a protector of my boy.)

Don't you wish he could respond......

"Oh Mrs X, I don't find it difficult. If you are having trouble, I would be happy and explain any difficult bits to you."

Hah!

Ha. My daughter is reading the Epilogue for the first time literally right now. She's seven and has understood perfectly. That's lousy.

I don't get this on any level. I read many age inappropriate books (someone probably should have stopped me - I had an appetite for horror) - nobody especially librarians batted an eyelid. I think if the book is in the library it's there to be read, it doesn't really matter who reads it does it?

I agree with the violence part I guess. But for sex, I think being exposed to these ideas before I was "ready" prob did me good in terms of being more aware of potential pitfalls. Books tend to explain the emotional side of sex in a way that films just can't, and in this day and age children are exposed to so much digitally that I think a good book with sex in context could be seen as very valuable.

I think latest research in NZ showed kids as young as 11 were exposed to online pornography so I don't think they'd be learning anything new except perhaps the issues surrounding sex. I think these sorts of books are selected by kids who are either at the recommended age or gifted and therefore bring the necessary maturity to decipher the material - or gain it from the reading.

I think a kid who is too young to absorb this sort of material would probably lose interest in the book as a whole before reaching any lewd parts. My 2 cents anyway

I already had to get special permission for him to check out chapter books at all. (His teacher did that for me.) Last year, he wasn't allowed to check out books, period. (Kindergarteners can't.)

I know this sounds kind of gross, but teachers at the school knows DS at this point. The music teacher suggested he skip a grade--the music teacher. He is an innocent, talkative extrovert who makes his abilities obvious. To say this to him suggests that this is the kind of adult who wants to bring kids down a peg or who just does not believe giftedness is a thing.

The teacher has let slip a few comments regarding this librarian. It's sad. Librarians are my favorite kind of people, usually.

But I don't even think she should advise of comprehension level needed--to him? He doesn't know his reading level. Furthermore, the librarian sure as heck doesn't know his reading level.

As a parent, I've sometimes said, "That book might be kind of hard for you," but that's with an intimate familiarity of what my kids can read. I would not say "You can't understand that" because that's a jerky thing to say. I could tell it hurt his feelings and confused him a bit. He asked me if there are other 6-year-olds who can read Harry Potter, and I told him that YES, there are.

Right, I know (didn't mean to sound accustaory) but he doesn't know his level...KWIM? He just knows he can basically read whatever he picks up in the children's section. "Harry Potter is a pretty hard book...do you feel like you understand it?" would have been much better, though.

But the fact is, she doesn't have the knowledge to predict whether it's too hard for him. Any book could be hard for any student, or not. Maybe (to be generous here) she means that he's inherently too young to emotionally comprehend some of the themes. I agree, but this could be said about most children up to the teen years when it comes the later HP books, and I don't think she's telling them ALL they can't understand it.

While I was still in my single digits, I read a wide range of books, including systematic theology, eschatology, lots of sci fantasy, and whatever the editors of Reader's Digest Condensed Books selected. I think that, for the most part, the content which I was not emotionally mature enough to absorb just went over my head.

I tend to think that children's understanding of age-inappropriate themes and images in books (however you define age-inappropriate) is partially limited by their real-life experience of those themes, and their sensory experience of the images. If your experience does not include a related traumatic or explicit situation, the words you read are more academic, rather than resonating intimately with the actual emotional experience that you have had.