Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Is the wrong of me to do?

We use the spiraling concept, every time a subject comes back around we add a little more information. DS was severly ill at 14 mos, was hospitalized for 10 days. He remembers being there but not why. He's asked me a couple of times to explain it to him and each time he wants a little more detail.

Ooh! I like that kid!

Bacon: nature's candy!

Mmmmmm... bacon.....

I have, in my bag right now (and I'm NOT making this up!) a bacon-chocolate bar. It's actually rather good, in an... interesting sort of way... LOL

We had a field trip to a local restaurant-and-gourmet-market yesterday (which conveniently enough wound through all the most interesting aisles where I was mentally adding all sorts of things to my grocery list for later...) and when we got to the Wall of 500 Chocolate Bars I asked our guide which his favorite was, and that was the one he said he liked. I don't know if he was really telling the truth or if they're just not moving and he wanted to drum up sales, but it's not half bad! LOL

My ds seems to know all kinds of things I didn't tell him... I honestly don't know where he gets most it... could be just living in NYC, information overload capital of the world. For example when someone recently got on the subway, ranting about "what really happened on 9/11," and distributing a graphic flier, I instinctively tried to shield him... but he matter-of-factly told me he knew all about the planes flying into the buildings, and he really wanted to know if I thought it was a conspiracy, too.

On the subject of the food chain... when we were debating vegetarianism at our dinner table last year, my son said: "It's just nature. Cows eat grass. We eat them."

This became his teenage stepbrother's facebook motto: "Cows: they eat grass, we eat them."

Its amazing how sheltered kids are today.

My dad had three tours in Vietnam and my mom's best friend's husband was killed there. My mom had dated him at one point. That was a tough time for everyone. My mom spent most nights watching the TV news looking for information on what was going on. My grandmother's brothers fought at Anzio. One did not come back, but the others did, but not in once piece. My maternal uncle was gay and a criminal psychologist as well. My grandmother ran a large construction firm. All this made for very interesting dinner discussion when we all got together - which was a lot.

I spent a lot of time on a farm growing up. Chickens, hogs, cattle, a big garden. The facts of life are known by 3 years of age. I spent a lot of time with my dad while he did business and drove tractors by the time I was 8.

I've been reading Jon von Neumann's biography. By the age of 6, his dad, a prominent banker, had him sit in on meetings a lot.

We want kids to advance intellectually, but spiritually we hold them back nowadays.

Austin, I tend to agree with you.

Well, I had a streak of not sheltering so that DS would maybe, possibly understand what would happen if he did not pay attention to cars. He had a long phase of thinking he was invincible, which was scary. I pointed out roadkill, told him what happens to the body when your brain no longer functions, etc. Since my kid's sensitivities seem to be all external (clothing issues, etc), this did not really phase him. And he's sure to tell our vegetarian friends that he likes meat.

However, I did recently shelter him from the part in The Graveyard Book where the person who just murdered his entire family stands over the crib with a bloody knife (and DH was good enough to warn me about this). And I didn't read the parts talking about suicides. But DS is just 5, and the rest of the book is quite good for a kid who likes ghost stories. So the amount of sheltering will vary from family to family and situation to situation, but whatever feels right to you will be the right thing.

And, remember, if you don't teach your kids something the way you want them to learn it, they'll probably learn it from someone else if they really want to know. For example, I don't remember talking to DS about robbers, but today we were following my mom's car, and DS said "we're following her just like robbers who follow someone home so they know where to go to steal stuff." Yikes! That led to an interesting discussion.

Austin,

It's all about life experience. Different strokes for different folks.

Kids still grow up on farms. Kids still visit third-world countries during summer vacation. Kids still go to work with their parents. Kids do local summer music and sports camps all summer.

The kicker is that one child probably won't do all of that.
Variety is the spice of life!

Where's the harm in being a little sheltered? It won't last forever!

DS6 likes to watch the world news whenever he can (isn't he supposed to go for maths and volcanos?) - I worried about this at first, but he takes it in his stride - it's all riveting food for thought as far as he's concerned. I don't let him watch/listen to stories about child pornography, rape and some of the nastier killings, and will try to keep away from this as long as I can - I don't want things that dirty touching them until they're a lot older.

He's fine (as is DS4) with the idea of death and disintegration. We're not religious, but neither boy has shown any inclination to worry about someday ending with rotting, burning, or being disected by medical students - they're interested in the options. I thought they might have liked the idea of going up on a platform to be eatern by birds, but it didn't grab their fancy.

I did once avoid a question about babies etc - not that I'm opposed to telling exactly, but just wasn't up for it at the time. It's amazing how fast a boy can lose interest when you start talking about chromosomes and DNA.

Different strokes for different folks indeed.

I wouldn't go out of my way to introduce a child to tragic things, but I have a story to back up that sometimes it's right and necessary for them to know them, and it can be done. DH was very seriously ill (so that for more than a month we thought he might die, and for a few days we thought he almost certainly would) when DS5 was 2.5. As long as his dying was just a small possibility, I didn't press it on DS, although I did carefully avoid saying things like "the doctors will make Daddy better and he'll come home" and ask the nursery staff to do the same. The day I fetched DS from nursery to take him to ITU and see DH sedated and on a ventilator, I did talk to him on the way about what he'd see, and I did say "Daddy may die" and try to explain what that meant. Not a conversation I'll forget in a hurry. But there was a real possibility that we'd get to the hospital and find him already dead; and obviously, I wasn't in a state where I could conceal that something was very, very wrong.

Fortunately DH did recover! (Although he never was diagnosed- that in itself has shaken all our worldviews somewhat; I knew there are things we can't cure, but that there are life-threatening illnesses we can't even diagnose, even with the full panoply of testing and experts available today...) DS has very much done the spiral thing: he's had several phases of wanting to talk about that time repeatedly. I don't think he actually remembers visiting ITU. I don't regret talking honestly to him at the crisis time, at all. At the same thing there are things we shield him from - e.g., DH still has many things about his physiology outside the normal range and will be followed up for the foreseeable future, but given that he's well, we tend just to say he's having check-ups, and not talk details in front of DS.