Question about why or why not you would censor your child’s reading material.

[KidsHappen]

I was not censored nor did I censor my children. We all had free run of the library. I didn't censor media either but if they saw or heard something that either I or they  felt may be problematic then we discussed it. The only hard line I drew was porn. I am fine with nudity, male or female or the kind of sex scenes you might find in an R rated movie but I didn't want them exposed to the misogyne found in porn. I did have one that pushed that boundary because she was curious so of course we had to have discussions about that.

But for the most part we did not run into any issues which is a good thing because all of my girls had their own IPhones and Amazon accounts as teenagers. They could have read or watched anything they wanted and I wouldn't have known the difference. So at least they knew that they could discuss anything with me if it was problematic for them.

I have five girls and they all read to some extent, some more than others but they all are good about discussing and recommending books to each other. I have read a lot in my lifetime and the only book I ever regretted and really wished I hadn't read was Gerald's Game by Stephen King and that was just because one of the injuries described just really grossed me out. I have self censored some movies because I knew I couldn't handle the subject matter, Sophie's Choice comes to mind. 

[Clarita]

I never thought about censoring books for my kids. Until I had a 5 year old who can read anything. That said I can't pre-read everything for him, but I have definitely taken books away from him. Well because he is young, I've discovered he isn't always good at distinguishing which characters are behaving in an appropriate manner (especially when the behavior isn't just bad but it's bad because of the context). He has replicated some of those nuanced bad behaviors or bad phrases and I've taken books away for that.

The other thing I've had to censor for my precocious reader is material that is too scary. He has me read through books sometimes when he isn't sure. 

My parents didn't censor anything for me. There were some things that I kind of wish they did. Like I wish I didn't read Stephen King in elementary school (I had nightmares for weeks and I never finished the book). 

[Dianthus]

46 minutes ago, Red Dove said:

Thanks for this reply. You have a very good point. I need to work on teaching my children to self-censor. 

When I was a young adult, I put aside a few books due to self-censoring. Once it goes into your head, it doesn’t come back out. 

As a child, I remember skipping passages that made me uncomfortable, but once I was hooked on a story (or series) I did not put it down. And the series would just have more exposure to things. And sometimes I am triggered to remember things that disturbed me in movies.

 

I "censor" and always have. Initially, it was to avoid twaddle. They recognize twaddle now themselves. We also talk about concerning topics and I explain that once seen, they can never unsee it.

I am just reading aloud The Hiding Place (I censor some of the mature content when reading aloud, which is why i put some books in this category). In the book, Corrie asked her father a question and then he asked her to pick up his suitcase. She said she couldn't pick it up because she was small and it was heavy. He told her that the answer to her question was too heavy for a child to carry but she would know the answer when she was older and strong enough to carry it. I thought that was a great analogy.

I pre order books from the library. Browsing is mostly limited to non fiction, picture books for littles, and sometimes familiar fiction authors. I use homeschool curriculum booklists for my orders and also read book reviews before ordering. It's a lot of extra work since I have eager readers. We get at least 40 library books a week, but sometimes twice a week.

[Clemsondana]

With my own kids, they haven't been interested in reading things that I would have a problem with.  My older did struggle with books where people were cruel and wouldn't read them,  I used to pick up classics and books from the Sonlight/Bookshark lists used at curriculum sales, and since kid was an advanced reader kid would read ones that matched things that we were studying.  But, I realized that I had to watch for the type of content because 8 year old kid really had a problem with books that were on the list for older kids because they were just too much.  On one hand, it's appropriate for kids to learn that the world isn't always a kind place, but on the other hand, everybody will experience that unkindness first hand in some way and i'm not sure there's benefit in having them experience all kinds of meanness and cruelty through people's first person accounts when they are young,.  I think that for some kids it leads to some amount of learned helplessness, espcially if the kid is the type to read and not want to talk about it.  It's one thing for a kid to know that there are  bad people who kidnap and hurt kids and another for them to read a first-person account from a survivor when the reader is 7, and I think parents have to make judgements about how many horrors they expose a kid to.  There is also a difference between what we let kids read, which they can walk away from, and what is assigned, as somebody mentioned above.  

I was a typical gen X kid, given free rein of the library and my parents' bookshelves.  Some of what I read when I moved to adult books in late elementary school was great - Sherlock Holmes, etc.  Others were fine - Louis Lamour westerns, Tom Clancey books.  Others had a lot of graphic sexual content that I'm sure my parents had forgotten about.  We may think that it doesn't have much impact, but the fact that my brain can still recall specific scenes from books I read at age 12 while I can't recall the plot of a book that i read last summer implies that our brains may work a little differently.  

My parents were more restrictive with movies, interestingly enough.  I check to see why a movie has a particular rating but am fairly lenient, and my kids aren't big movie people anyway.  So, with books and movies I'm not quite the 'anything goes' sort, but I'm also not particularly sheltering.  My bigger 'censorship' was with my tween - at some point I had to severely restrict the teen/tween TV that was on Disney and Nickelodian because the kids were so rude and my kid was coming to mimic that because it was 'normal' unlike kid's reasonably polite friends.  

[Melanie32]

I definitely limited what my kids could read or watch. My parents didn’t limit my media intake in any way and I so wish they would have! My children are grown now and one watches whatever he wants and rarely reads and the other is very selective concerning her media intake but loves books and movies. 
 

 

 

[Katy]

Not books, but I just realized I do censor my younger two on YouTube content quite a bit. I used to have their tablets set to their ages but I switched to approved content only because several of those “family” channels feature kids in elaborate play fantasies that include talking to their parents or siblings in completely inappropriate and disrespectful ways. 

I used to block Nickelodeon shows for my oldest DD because she’d mimic the condescending and sarcastic tones some of those shows had. 

[EKS]

I'm not sure if I ever had occasion to take a book away from either of my kids, but I certainly would have if I thought it was inappropriate for them, which could have meant any sort of adult situations, themes, or scenes that they didn't have the maturity to process well for whatever reason.

If I had a kid today, I would make sure they stayed away from that narcissistic, identity-wallowing BS that passes for a certain sort of young adult "literature."  The last thing anyone, but especially a young person, needs is to have extreme self-centeredness modeled for them like that.

Edited July 26, 2023 by EKS

[Momto6inIN]

6 hours ago, Dianthus said:

 

I am just reading aloud The Hiding Place (I censor some of the mature content when reading aloud, which is why i put some books in this category). In the book, Corrie asked her father a question and then he asked her to pick up his suitcase. She said she couldn't pick it up because she was small and it was heavy. He told her that the answer to her question was too heavy for a child to carry but she would know the answer when she was older and strong enough to carry it. I thought that was a great analogy.

I have used this analogy with my kids a lot over the years in various situations (not connected to reading necessarily but things on the news or personal situations that they partly overhear, etc) and it's really been helpful. My oldest DD has thanked me for not burdening her with some knowledge before she's ready for it - specifically for not telling her what "rape" meant when she was a young child asking about a word she'd heard. When we discussed it as an older teen she was ready and prepared.

[ScoutTN]

When my kids were younger, absolutely did I curate based on what content was appropriate. Filters loosen as they get older, but I still make recommendations and we discuss, discuss, discuss.

Ds is not much of a reader now that he’s in ps; video content is more of an issue and we do still sift and choose. 
 

[HomeAgain]

12 hours ago, Red Dove said:

For those of you that don’t censor any of your children’s reading material, why? What is the argument for letting them read whatever they get their hands on? Do you have a line somewhere? As in, if your child was reading a very graphic novel, would you still let them? If you don’t censor, are you ok with them watching any movie they want? 

For those of you that do censor, where is your line drawn? What is your argument for keeping certain things from your child? 

 

When my children were very young, no censoring was needed.  All books were either bought by us or found in the children's room at the library, and I trust our librarians to make recommendations on things for each child.  I had a precocious reader who would attempt anything in the house - but those with a maturity level above a 6yo were not understood well or were just abandoned (Fahrenheit 451 he did well with, but hated that there was a lot of cigarette smoking in the book so would censor it himself).

As my kids got older, the tweens to teens, we started having more discussions.  I've asked them not to read 3 books, and told them exactly why:

Lolita: it's one book when you read it without context, another with.  When ready for the story behind it, then you are absolutely allowed.

Lord of the Flies: The author's personal experiences in his childhood need to be examined along with the book because it presents how he thought about development in general, but the true story that mimics the book shows a much different side of adolescent development.

Go Set A Watchman: I've asked them not to read this until their 20s at least, because they need their own life experiences to see how a character can change.

 

Anytime I've had a reservation about a book I tell them why, and then let them decide.  The discussion is always available.  I don't believe children need censorship from ideas and I think trying to ban something that they have ready access to is just setting the situation up for failure.  Between e-books, digital libraries, town libraries, Little Free Libraries, book stores, friends, secondhand stores...a tween/teen can their hands on just about anything.  It's my job to give them a safe place to think about what they want to read and a place to discuss it.  They know I'll read anything.  I'll tell them which graphic novels are more explicit and adult material.  I'll read anything on their shelves except that darn Wings of Fire series that never.freaking.ends.

That said, I did balk at some scheduled books in curriculum.  I think it was BYL that had Clan of The Cave Bear listed in Year 9.  It's not a book my child would pick up on their own, and while it is meticulously researched, it's not one I wanted to forcefully discuss with a 14yo if they weren't ready to choose it as reading material.  So I didn't pursue that further.  I thought Black Beauty was a little much for my then-sensitive 8yo until I saw him reading it one day.  I had held off on that year of ELTL and gave him a year with something else because Black Beauty was scheduled.  But he read it 3 months into the year and loved it.

[wendyroo]

My mom was strongly anti-censorship, so I was allowed to read/watch whatever I could get my hands on. It was not a case of her not knowing what I was consuming, but rather that she felt kids would stop reading/watching content they didn't want to engage with, and that any topic we did want to engage with was an opportunity to discuss, learn, and expand our worldview. So by age 9ish I was reading a bunch of VC Andrews, Heinlein, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and endless "trash" novels, and watching Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman, etc.

I have taken a similar approach with my kids. We have limited screen time, so TV/movies aren't much of an issue, but they have full access to any books they can get through our library or inter-library loan. And I choose read aloud books specifically with the goal of normalizing discussions about "taboo" topics so that hopefully the kids won't hesitate to come to me to talk about anything they need or want to even if it feels embarrassing or uncomfortable.

[vonfirmath]

12 hours ago, Momto6inIN said:

I teach my kids how to self-censor from a young age because there was simply no possible way for me to pre-read every book they ever wanted to read. If you're reading something and it sets off bells that maybe you shouldn't be reading this or there is something inappropriate or questionable in it, set the book aside and talk to Mom about it. I tell them that I have to do this too because as a Christian there's all kinds of books I can start to read but that make me feel icky or make unwanted thoughts arise in my head and there's nothing wrong with stopping reading and finding something else. It's an adult skill that needs to be practiced.

I do think there is damage that can be done by reading some novels too early. I was not censored or taught discernment in my reading choices and my parents had no idea what all I read about as a pre-teen. Lots of true crime and biographies of mass murderers and caveman porn (looking at you, Clan of the Cave Bear series which I had read several times by age 12). There are defintely thought patterns and images and words in my adult mind that I wish weren't there and I wish I could get rid of.

Oh my I can't imagine Clan of the Cave Bear at age 12! The girls in HS were reading that and though I did read some stuff I wish I had not put into my head, that one I was completely uninterested in just from the other girls' talking about it!

[vonfirmath]

9 hours ago, MercyA said:

DD15 has always placed limits on herself due to her own comfort levels with various subjects, so I've never had to say "you can't read that." I'd actually like her to read more books with adult themes.

If I needed to place limits, I'd draw the line at very graphic sexual content and extreme gore or torture. I think both can be harmful. 

Like @cintinative, I read V.C. Andrews at a young age and I still *vividly* remember some scenes from those books. They weren't healthy for me. 

V.C. Andrews is the author I read in High School (despite my dad advising me not to) that I REALLY wish I had not read.

[TexasProud]

Honestly, I didn't have to censor, but they also didn't have that much exposure.  I read good, quality literature aloud from the very beginning.  (Funny, because Lord of the Flies was one I read aloud to them, compared to the other poster.)  My children never had any interest in YA books. I did wait to introduce Harry Potter until the boys were in middle school/early high school.  We started reading the books shortly before the last book came out on film. We didn't see the movies until after we read the series. 

Music.  People assumed I censored my children's music.  Even apologized to me for listening to secular music in the car.  I have NO problem with secular music.  That said, I wouldn't like profanity ladened music, but my kids listened to.  They ended up loving Journey and other "oldies." 

Video/Movies- Obviously, no rated R before 17. Well,  that isn't quite true.  We did watch Band of Brothers with them. We had it on DVD, so we fast forwarded the one sex scene that was SO not needed in the series. We did not have cable.  My boys didn't get smart phones until they were in college.  However, they didn't even come out until they were in high school, so that wasn't a pressure I faced with them.  My daughter, on the other hand, was the last one to get a smart phone after she turned 16.  Many of her friends had them in elementary school, which I thought was ridiculous.  Now research is proving that having smartphones as children is harmful. 

So, it wasn't so much censoring as exposure. I guess.  I never said no to something they wanted to read, watch or listen to, but they never asked me for anything I thought would be offensive.  Same with a curfew.  They didn't have one. But they rarely asked to be out past 10pm.  So it wasn't a problem. 

[Ottakee]

So much is age dependent.  “Censorship” might be much higher as early elementary ages and moving towards guiding and discussing and discerning as they reach middle and high school.

[Kalmia]

I had very early readers. One read chapter books at 3. The other at 4. By 5 and 6, they could read almost anything. So I had to be very cautious about what they read. There were threads on here back then about books for advanced readers that didn't have mature content. I really appreciated those, so much, as I didn't have time to pre-read all the books my voracious readers devoured. One of my children was much more sensitive than the other, but also leaned toward nonfiction so that usually wasn't a problem. But he did self-censor once when he was 4 after reading a chapter book series that I can't remember the name of (I think the covers were black and they were published in hardcover). There was a troll under the stairs with an illustration in one volume. He'd encountered trolls in fairy tales before, but this one was in a modern kid's house. He was screaming hysterically for me to "get this book out of the house!" And I did. We also examined our stairs and I showed him there was no closet where things could hide under the stairs, just another staircase to the basement. 

My daughter who is 18 and mostly read fiction, tells me now I should have censored her more between the ages of 10-13 which she calls "the danger-zone" and she says her child will not have the freedom she did. She will be censoring books. Her kids will be tightly locked down on phones and internet. (To which I say, not really joking, by then your child will be lucky if their brain isn't physically hardwired into the internet.) The internet anorexia influencers (girls taking you along on their anorexia journey on youtube) were the start of her eating disorder, she said, she had never heard of limiting one's eating or thought of herself as fat before encountering them. Then she began to search out books with characters who had anorexia or bulimia to feed that body dysmorphic disorder. She said that, plus the interpersonal hatefulness and angst over weight, beauty, popularity, feelings of much of YA was extremely detrimental to her sense of self worth (she did like fantasy YA very much and is writing her own now).

Basically, as most people have said in this thread, I agree that for MOST kids 12/13 seems to be an age where the brain has matured enough to be more free about book choices. But then hearing my daughter's report of her experiences, if I had it to do over again knowing what I know now, I would have curated books up until 14/15 (and would have never given access to the internet until that same time). And I say this as a liberal, freedom-of-speech loving, non-religious person. What others do, think, or believe about parenting is not worth my child heading down a potentially fatal path. (p.s. My daughter is doing a lot better lately, but she does have to be occasionally reminded that she skipped a meal.)

So, if I were to do it over again with my children. I would censor topics that are likely to be "contagious" and potentially fatal (body image, addiction, gun-worship, etc.) up until high school, not stopping at 10/12 like I did. With frontal lobes not fully connected and tween/teen brains tuned to hyper-respond to everything in their environment, neuroscience is telling us developing brains are vulnerable. My child tells me now her developing brain was vulnerable. I do not believe "talking about the books" would have made any difference with her vulnerability. Books and internet content will still be there to be read when a child's brain has matured, there is no rush and my job is to watch out for my individual children.

As for the Clan of the Cave Bear, I remember reading the series in high school and loving it. I recall vaguely there were rape scenes and I am sure there was other awful stuff but it didn't traumatize me. "Teen me" figured that life in Paleolithic times would often be brutal and the author was trying to depict that.

As for Lord of the Flies. The book really can't be understood without knowing that it is a rewrite of the author's favorite childhood book, The Coral Island by R. M. Ballentyne, which is a gentle adventure story about boys shipwrecked on an island. (Even some of the character names are the same.) After being in the military and seeing the atrocities of WWII firsthand, William Golding lost faith in the innate goodness of human beings. The innocence of his beloved childhood book, The Coral Island, now seemed naive and he set about rewriting it to show what would have "really happened" if a group boys were left alone on an island (as informed by his experiences in WWII). If it was taught in that light, how the brutality of war completely upended his core beliefs about the nature of humanity, Lord of the Flies would be much easier to understand and richer discussion-wise. In my opinion, both books should be assigned/read together. Not sure in which order though... 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by Kalmia

[Katy]

38 minutes ago, Kalmia said:

<snip>

As for Lord of the Flies. The book really can't be understood without knowing that it is a rewrite of the author's favorite childhood book, The Coral Island by R. M. Ballentyne, which is a gentle adventure story about boys shipwrecked on an island. (Even some of the character names are the same.) After being in the military and seeing the atrocities of WWII firsthand, William Golding lost faith in the innate goodness of human beings. The innocence of his beloved childhood book, The Coral Island, now seemed naive and he set about rewriting it to show what would have "really happened" if a group boys were left alone on an island (as informed by his experiences in WWII). If it was taught in that light, how the brutality of war completely upended his core beliefs about the nature of humanity, Lord of the Flies would be much easier to understand and richer discussion-wise. In my opinion, both books should be assigned/read together. Not sure in which order though... 

 

 

Wow I would have had a completely different experience in 10th grade English if that had been explained to me. Do you by chance have a similarly redemptive explanation for Great Expectations? 

I think I’ve ranted here once before about the bizarre need to quash 10th grade kids hopes by only assigning depressing literature. 

[Red Dove]

42 minutes ago, Kalmia said:

 

My daughter who is 18 and mostly read fiction, tells me now I should have censored her more between the ages of 10-13 which she calls "the danger-zone" and she says her child will not have the freedom she did. She will be censoring books. Her kids will be tightly locked down on phones and internet. (To which I say, not really joking, by then your child will be lucky if their brain isn't physically hardwired into the internet.) The internet anorexia influencers (girls taking you along on their anorexia journey on youtube) were the start of her eating disorder, she said, she had never heard of limiting one's eating or thought of herself as fat before encountering them. Then she began to search out books with characters who had anorexia or bulimia to feed that body dysmorphic disorder. She said that, plus the interpersonal hatefulness and angst over weight, beauty, popularity, feelings of much of YA was extremely detrimental to her sense of self worth (she did like fantasy YA very much and is writing her own now).

 

42 minutes ago, Kalmia said:

As for Lord of the Flies. The book really can't be understood without knowing that it is a rewrite of the author's favorite childhood book, The Coral Island by R. M. Ballentyne, which is a gentle adventure story about boys shipwrecked on an island. (Even some of the character names are the same.) After being in the military and seeing the atrocities of WWII firsthand, William Golding lost faith in the innate goodness of human beings. The innocence of his beloved childhood book, The Coral Island, now seemed naive and he set about rewriting it to show what would have "really happened" if a group boys were left alone on an island (as informed by his experiences in WWII). If it was taught in that light, how the brutality of war completely upended his core beliefs about the nature of humanity, Lord of the Flies would be much easier to understand and richer discussion-wise. In my opinion, both books should be assigned/read together. Not sure in which order though... 

 

 

Wow, lot’s of good information here. Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge. Tweens and teens are very vulnerable to adopting other’s ideas. 

I didn’t know that was the perspective that the author of Lord of the Flies came from. That is interesting and insightful. 

[KungFuPanda]

I started out pre-reading books because my daughter was a bit sensitive. However, she became a voracious reader early on and at that point I thought it would be more damaging to slow her down to what I could read first. I would have let my kids read romance if they were interested because I feel that genre normalizes holding men accountable for their actions and it’s patriarchal to dismiss an entire category of books as “trash.”
 

We did censor movies and tv, but that was easier before streaming existed. We also had one computer in the family room when my kids were young. They didn’t have phones til high school. Curating what they were exposed to was much simpler for me. Also, my kids only read real paper books. They even had textbooks.  Physical media is just easier to manage. 
 

I grew up with parents who would be mortified if a kid saw breasts on television but you could watch people get shot all day long. It took me a long time to realize how backwards that was. 

[HomeAgain]

2 hours ago, Kalmia said:

As for Lord of the Flies. The book really can't be understood without knowing that it is a rewrite of the author's favorite childhood book, The Coral Island by R. M. Ballentyne, which is a gentle adventure story about boys shipwrecked on an island. (Even some of the character names are the same.) After being in the military and seeing the atrocities of WWII firsthand, William Golding lost faith in the innate goodness of human beings. The innocence of his beloved childhood book, The Coral Island, now seemed naive and he set about rewriting it to show what would have "really happened" if a group boys were left alone on an island (as informed by his experiences in WWII). If it was taught in that light, how the brutality of war completely upended his core beliefs about the nature of humanity, Lord of the Flies would be much easier to understand and richer discussion-wise. In my opinion, both books should be assigned/read together. Not sure in which order though... 

 

 

Two things: Golding's experiences in boarding school and as a teacher also colored his view.  He just thought boys sucked as humans.

AND

Lord of the Flies readers had the opportunities to see what would happen when a group of boys were shipwrecked for 15 months in 1965 (11 years after Golding's story).  Their experience was completely different than what the book suggests.  They set up chore rotations, provided basic medical care to each other, and worked together to build shelter and food resources.

[Farrar]

On the one hand, I appreciate that some people felt scarred by something dark in a book as a child or have a kid who shied away from that sort of content.

But on the other hand, I have seen parents censor teens, including older high schoolers, from reading about the ugliness of real history - racism, bigotry, war, genocide, etc. Or about the real ugliness of the world around us - cancer, abuse, gun violence, discrimination, etc. I have a serious issue with that censorship and that protection once kids get to be high school aged. Even if it is upsetting to read about some of these things, it should be. And many of the children's books that tackle them in child appropriate ways are good ways to prepare kids for how to think through these issues. 

I also think it's worth saying that for some kids, reading about dark things is upsetting, but for many, it's a way to process and understand the world around them. And that can include kids who have cushy, protected lives. Sometimes the darkness kids see is within their own thoughts. And sometimes kids are dealing with issues we don't fully know about even as parents. Books can help give them voice and understand those issues, whether it's understanding their own identity or understanding why something they've seen or experienced was wrong or upsetting.

[Brittany1116]

My kids aren't bookworms. They don't read for pleasure for the most part. They don't read nearly as much as I did at their ages. I censor or curate. There are things I read too early that I don't want them saddled with (for example, Clan of the Cave Bear around age 10? 11?). I also don't believe all books are inherently valuable.

[Melissa Louise]

My entire grade read Flowers in the Attic at 12 and not a one of us felt scarred. Mostly, we just developer a whole lot of bad taste jokes about donuts.

Maybe we were a particularly rough lot. 

I do think not being a visualizer made it so that books really do glance off for me. I don't get pictures stuck in my head. 

[Farrar]

Clan of the Cave Bear is why I feel like 13 yos reading dirty fanfic isn't going to ruin them. I mean, yeah, it can become a negative thing without support and context, which is why I believe in talking about s*x is super important, but teenage girls have been reading erotica and marking the dirty bits in novels forever.

ETA: What I'm saying is that lots of people are happy to say, "Oh me. Clan of the Cave Bear was so upsetting," because it's safe. Publicly being chaste is always safer for women than expressing sexuality, which is still frowned upon unless women are fitting into the male gaze and desire. But that book's sequel was massively popular with women for a reason and it wasn't an interest in early homo sapiens - Neanderthal interactions. I knew girls who had the page numbers of certain scenes memorized.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Farrar

[Terabith]

I find the Clan of the Cave Bear example to be interesting, because I just reread the entire series last month.  Now, to be fair, I didn't discover them until college.  But I really think the first two books, especially, to be pretty good and I would have no problem with a teen reading them while they are being discussed.  Yes, there is a lot of sex, including rape, in the first one, and it is SUPPOSED to be disturbing, but it also does a really good job of digging into a lot of sociological and anthropological questions around culture and social mores.  There is also examples of what sex really should be in the sequels, although it does get rather tedious.  My husband and I call the fourth book Plains of Porn rather than Plains of Passage, and I find myself skipping over a lot of those bits, not because I'm squeamish but just because it gets BORING.  Oh look, we're walking again and now we're having sex again.  Not every book is right for every child or teen, but I think for MOST kids, the first couple books are more likely to be edifying and thought provoking than traumatic or inappropriate.  

Also, I loved The Giver, and the whole series is my oldest kid's favorite books of all time, and they read them in sixth grade.  Dystopian literature can really speak well to kids/ teens/ adults, and it can raise all sorts of good questions and discussions.  Again, obviously they're not right for every person, and that is a challenge when teaching.  

It's just interesting.  I'm not looking to argue with anyone really, and I think the later Clan of the Cave Bear books get to be kinda terribly written and Mary Sueish, with the main character becoming increasingly unrealistic.  But it starts off well in my mind, and there aren't a lot of books that deal with relationships between homo sapiens and Neanderthals.  

[Red Dove]

3 hours ago, Brittany1116 said:

My kids aren't bookworms. They don't read for pleasure for the most part. They don't read nearly as much as I did at their ages. I censor or curate. There are things I read too early that I don't want them saddled with (for example, Clan of the Cave Bear around age 10? 11?). I also don't believe all books are inherently valuable.

Why did so many children read Clan of the Cave Bear? Was it a bestseller at the time, or was it required reading? I had never even heard of that book until this forum. 

[Clemsondana]

3 minutes ago, Red Dove said:

Why did so many children read Clan of the Cave Bear? Was it a bestseller at the time, or was it required reading? I had never even heard of that book until this forum. 

It was on my parents' bookshelf.  That's where most of my reading came from in middle/high school.  I think it was fairly popular at the time, but I don't know.  Back in the days of 1 TV per house and only a handful of channels, I read all sorts of things over breaks from school.  

[thatfirstsip]

I found the rape in Clan of the Cave Bear pretty traumatizing as a young teenager - but I barely noticed it in McCaffery, and I think it's actually more problematic in McCaffery, so take that for what it's worth

[Brittany1116]

7 minutes ago, Red Dove said:

Why did so many children read Clan of the Cave Bear? Was it a bestseller at the time, or was it required reading? I had never even heard of that book until this forum. 

My aunt bought me every book that she ever heard was good, including this series and a few others I had no business reading. She consumed media indiscriminately and didn't consider my age I suppose. Her only child is several years younger than I am.

I disagree entirely that I am happy to say a book or series like that upset me because it's safe. There is nothing safe about giving a 10 or 12 year old unfettered access to gratuitous sex, with our without robust sex education. A ten year old's mind isn't ready to process the many and varied consequences of the scenes depicted in the books. That the books were popular with grown women for some of the same content has no bearing on its effects on kids and tweens, who don't need to concern themselves with the male gaze and desire. The fact that it has been mentioned more than once among a very small group of respondents says a lot to me, but nothing about the safety of expressing sexuality. 

[LMD]

I censored those stupid rainbow fairy books. Monstrosities. 

Actually, I limited them to 1 a library visit. 

I had a kid who would latch on to unhealthy imagery (written or visual) and be unable to regulate.

Mainly I tried to moderate with balance, exposure to good stuff and lots of discussion. I very rarely said no. Sometimes we read it together (eg miss peregrine). They read the giver, hunger games, lots of teen dystopia (went through a maze runner phase), 1984 between around 7th-10th

If anything I'd go back and censor more. That dark teen dystopia stuff can be too much, imo.

[Clarita]

34 minutes ago, Red Dove said:

Why did so many children read Clan of the Cave Bear? Was it a bestseller at the time, or was it required reading? I had never even heard of that book until this forum. 

According to Amazon it was a bestseller in the 80's... No one here is really making this book sound like a must read or even a good read. It does have a lot of reviews and stars on Amazon.

[Drama Llama]

I think it depends so much on the kid and the material.  I have not done much censoring for my kids, but after their brother's death, I can remember coming here and asking for suggestions of novels that were free of the death of children, because we all just needed a break.   And I can imagine that if my kids had that specific trauma trigger to avoid, other kids may have things they can't tolerate either.  

My first instinct for material that makes me uncomfortable is to pull up alongside the child and explore it together so we can have conversations about what we're reading.  I have a kid who was a vampire obsessed elementary school age boy who wanted to read Twilight.  We ended up doing it as a read aloud, which was painful (for me) but gave me lots of chances to counteract the nonsense.  I vividly remember him waving his hands to stop me from launching into another lecture and saying something like "I get it, he doesn't have consent!  I promise I will never climb in a girl's window while they are sleeping!"  

But there is definitely material that, if I knew my kid was accessing it, I'd have grave concerns, and would want to do something, whether that's reading and discussing, or offering alternate texts with alternate view points, or censoring, or seeking professional help.  I'm thinking of things like white supremacist literature, pro-anorexia materials, incel materials etc . . .  Fortunately, I haven't dealt with that, but I imagine if I ever had to I'd need to individualize my response to the child in front of me.  

[Danae]

1 hour ago, Red Dove said:

Why did so many children read Clan of the Cave Bear? Was it a bestseller at the time, or was it required reading? I had never even heard of that book until this forum. 

I read it as assigned reading in 7th grade, public school.  At that point only one of the sequels was out, and I read that one on my own.   The third one came out when I was in 9th.  I think the first three had literary value, and I don’t think I was too young to read them.  I remember part of the paper I wrote on the first one dealing with the fact that B was forcing A to have sex specifically because he knew how much she hated it.  It was not a bad thing to be thinking critically about at that age.  
 

I suspect the teacher might have thought twice about getting kids started on the series if the later sequels had already been released.  They were my first experience of “wow, this sequel that I had been really looking forward to totally sucked.”

[Melissa Louise]

2 hours ago, LMD said:

I censored those stupid rainbow fairy books. Monstrosities. 

Actually, I limited them to 1 a library visit. 

I had a kid who would latch on to unhealthy imagery (written or visual) and be unable to regulate.

Mainly I tried to moderate with balance, exposure to good stuff and lots of discussion. I very rarely said no. Sometimes we read it together (eg miss peregrine). They read the giver, hunger games, lots of teen dystopia (went through a maze runner phase), 1984 between around 7th-10th

If anything I'd go back and censor more. That dark teen dystopia stuff can be too much, imo.

I must have read dd2 about a million of those rainbow fairy books! At some stage I revolted and made dd1 read them aloud. I think I also got dd1 to read the Babysitters club to her as well. And the Saddle Club. Poor dd1!

[LMD]

4 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

I must have read dd2 about a million of those rainbow fairy books! At some stage I revolted and made dd1 read them aloud. I think I also got dd1 to read the Babysitters club to her as well. And the Saddle Club. Poor dd1!

😄 

This was my oldest, and no way was I reading them lol. 

I guess I do censor for insipidity. And aggressive annoyingness.

[Shoeless]

I was really, really glad when DS outgrew Puppy Place books. Every single book was the same insipid story. 

There was some other animal series, maybe Animal Ark? They had titles like "Gerbils in the Gymnasium" and "Penguins at Parliament". Just awful, but he loved them for a time.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Shoeless

[Clarita]

15 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

I think I also got dd1 to read the Babysitters club to her as well. And the Saddle Club. Poor dd1!

I loved the Babysitter's Club as a kid. I'm pretty they won't be as entertaining now that I'm an adult. 

I'm not looking forward to feeling like perhaps I "should" be reading Harry Potter to my kids. I couldn't finish half of one as a teenager. I have zero desire to watch all the movies as an adult. I'm hoping if I start Lord of the Rings beforehand they will share my meh-ness with that series.

[Terabith]

29 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

I must have read dd2 about a million of those rainbow fairy books! At some stage I revolted and made dd1 read them aloud. I think I also got dd1 to read the Babysitters club to her as well. And the Saddle Club. Poor dd1!

I refused to read aloud books that I did not personally enjoy.  So I was completely fine with my kids reading the Rainbow Fairy books, but I never read any of them aloud.  

[Rosie_0801]

I didn't tell my kids about Dr Seuss.

[Drama Llama]

19 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

I didn't tell my kids about Dr Seuss.

Why?

[Rosie_0801]

2 minutes ago, BandH said:

Why?

I was still burned out from reading them to my little brother, yes, 21 years later. 😂

[Drama Llama]

Just now, Rosie_0801 said:

I was still burned out from reading them to my little brother, yes, 21 years later. 😂

OK, that's a good reason.

[Katy]

2 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

I was still burned out from reading them to my little brother, yes, 21 years later. 😂

I have refused to read Horton Hears a Who or any Horton series books because it gave me a bit of an existential crisis at age 6. To be fair that was after going outside to watch a satellite launch, asking my mom why the rockets went sideways instead of straight up, and having her build a solar system to explain it to me.  I read the book to my sister afterwards and nearly had a meltdown at the implication that we are floating on dust in space and no one knows or cares.

[El...]

19 minutes ago, Katy said:

I have refused to read Horton Hears a Who or any Horton series books because it gave me a bit of an existential crisis at age 6. To be fair that was after going outside to watch a satellite launch, asking my mom why the rockets went sideways instead of straight up, and having her build a solar system to explain it to me.  I read the book to my sister afterwards and nearly had a meltdown at the implication that we are floating on dust in space and no one knows or cares.

Aw, what a thoughtful kid you were! 

[J-rap]

Yes, I censored books.  Several of my children had very good reading skills at a young age.  So my child in 4th grade could easily read Tale of Two Cities and that was okay with me.  Of course her young mind wasn't taking it all in, but I was comfortable with the messages going into her brain nevertheless. 

But books that were very graphic regarding violence, sex, or showed women being treated in demeaning ways, etc. were a no.  I didn't have time to read through and discuss every single book that they were reading -- they were voracious readers.  

At those young ages especially we wanted to fill their minds with things that encouraged them to be thoughtful and compassionate people.  Sometimes biographies were more graphic than we would like, but if they encouraged thoughtfulness and compassion, etc., then we were more likely to be okay with it. 

Once they got into high school we were more lenient, but we wouldn't have let them read anything.  We wouldn't have let them read Fifty Shades of Gray!  

 

 

[busymama7]

Books like rainbow fairy, magic treehouse, puppy place etc are meant to be fluency builders for kids. You could not pay me anywhere near enough money to read them aloud. No way no how. Not doing it.  I didn't care if they read traddle while learning to read but we didn't allow a free for all content wise. We don't with TV or movies either.  

[Red Dove]

1 hour ago, Clarita said:

I loved the Babysitter's Club as a kid. I'm pretty they won't be as entertaining now that I'm an adult. 

 

They won’t be. Trust me, I tried them as an adult. Hahaha

[rebcoola]

3 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

I must have read dd2 about a million of those rainbow fairy books! At some stage I revolted and made dd1 read them aloud. I think I also got dd1 to read the Babysitters club to her as well. And the Saddle Club. Poor dd1!

Ok i guess I censor I wont read things like the fairy books aloud lol. Those are for reading to yourself. 

[Melissa Louise]

They are definitely for reading to oneself, but dd2 refused to learn to read for quite some time!

She wanted to read, sure, and was quite devastated she couldn't read, but she did not want to have to go through any learning to get there.

I finally worked out that she would deign to learn to read if she wrote books and then read them back to herself, so once I'd written out her million dictated books, and she'd illustrated them, and then somehow taught herself to read using them, then we got to quit reading her the stupid fairy books. 

 

 

[LMD]

11 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

My entire grade read Flowers in the Attic at 12 and not a one of us felt scarred. Mostly, we just developer a whole lot of bad taste jokes about donuts.

Maybe we were a particularly rough lot. 

I do think not being a visualizer made it so that books really do glance off for me. I don't get pictures stuck in my head. 

Missed this. Every girl in my school had read the whole series by the end of 6th grade. I would have been 10-11 years old. I really liked them...