Let a hundred flowers bloom
I'm fascinated by notions of "protecting" children from exposure to this or that from the real world. To a greater extent than almost anyone, I suspect, I scoff at the idea of "age appropriateness", or at least the idea that parents should be actively preventing their children from encountering certain facts, ideas and points of view. I know parents who don't want their pre-teen children to learn about the existence of homosexuality from overheard conversations or whatever (a code word takes the place of "gay" or "homosexual" in parental discussions). Another friend with young children recently expressed dismay that a parent was watching a PG-13 movie with a five-year-old. The specific issue: the word "hangover" came up.
I can see why there is the impulse to shelter the children. For any parent who grew up without the Internet, cable TV and movies on video, it must be striking what kinds of things these media commend to a child's attention. I'm sure I had a more sheltered youth than it would be easy to have today without parental intervention/censorship. But there was still a lot of harmless exposure to all sorts of grown-up themes. Although my friends and I watched all of Monty Python on PBS during grade school, I think whole categories of the humor ("He used to ram things up their . . .") just didn't register with us. I suppose if I'd asked my parents what Eric Idle's soldier character had been up to, there might have been some interesting moments, but I like to think they would have told me true things and not restricted my PBS viewing. And it can be kind of charming the way kids learn about "adult" material. One big debate in my circle during sixth grade was whether we would get in trouble for saying "Jane, you ignorant slut!" on the playground. Now that's just cute. (The word "slut" was in our blue-and-yellow school dictionaries, defined as "1. A dirty, slovenly woman. 2. A prostitute." I remember the definition precisely because, to settle our dispute, my friend pulled out the dictionary and read out the definition just as—in one of those coincidences found only in real life and great fiction—our teacher quietly entered the room and took up a position behind him.)
Anyway, some five-year-old has no idea what a hangover is. That doesn't mean he can't be exposed to a film with that concept in it. It's probably not going to register. If it does register, and he asks, "Mommy, what's a hangover?", I don't see how that harms anyone. When it's explained, in five-year-old terms, the kid will still have a very limited understanding (like when I read about superstring theory in the newspaper), and I don't really see the harm (indeed, why isn't it a "teachable moment"?). I'm not suggesting it's a good idea to inundate five-year-olds with the idea that hangovers are a normal part of life. But it's far worse to shield your kid from the world, or try to stage-manage the timing of when he finds out things about the world. You won't catch everything anyway, and your kid could end up with some strange, incomplete notions from the bits that do get through.
And it's far from clear that those Monty Python episodes weren't the most important and valuable part of my education in fourth grade.
Labels: Only in Don't Trust Snakes, parenting
posted at 7:08 PM
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