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Eleanor
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| Posted: July 19 2008 at 12:59pm | IP Logged
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This question came up in response to Cay's posts in the "Moving too fast" thread, and also to a lovely talk by Elizabeth that I recently re-read. If it's been covered elsewhere, please forgive my repetition. (I've ordered Elizabeth's book, but it hasn't shown up yet.)
If you spend much of your time learning together as a family, with an emphasis on read-alouds and "living history," how do you protect sensitive young children from topics that they aren't ready for?
Some people have assured me that "if they're too young for something, it will go right over their heads," but this hasn't been our experience at all. Maybe our children are unusually sensitive, but they seem to notice everything, and ask a lot of fairly deep questions. Little pitchers have elephant-sized ears around here! 
We do our best to provide gentle, age-appropriate explanations, but we've still had several incidents where unplanned exposure to difficult subject matter led to long-lasting nightmares, anxieties, or just plain brooding. I'm thinking here of real-life issues, such as violence, wars, religious controversies, terrible family situations, etc. "It's only pretend" works when it's a fairy tale, but not when it's a biography or history book.
Of course, they'll hear about these things sooner or later, but I'm uneasy about focusing on a method of education that would seem likely to speed up and intensify this process. One of our main reasons for homeschooling is to protect our children's innocence and allow them to have a peaceful childhood. Coming at it from the opposite angle -- thinking of when they're older -- we hope to allow each child to move ahead at his own pace, exploring topics in as much depth as his intellectual, spiritual, and emotional maturity allows. I can't figure out how we could do justice to both of these goals, while basing our curriculum around picture books and family read-alouds.
I would be very interested to hear about other families' experiences in this area, especially if you have children like my 4.5-year-old, who's very much inclined to "bite off more than she can chew" in terms of weighty and potentially disturbing ideas.
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Mare
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Eleanor,
There is a story that I once heard about Corrie Ten Boom. When she was a youngster, traveling with her father, she asked him a question that had an adult theme to it. He reponded by asking her to carry his suitcase for him. Corrie tried lifting the suitcase and it was too heavy for her. Her father than said that there is some knowledge that is too heavy for her to carry and that he would carry that knowledge for her until she was old enough to hear it.
I have applied that story to my children. When a topic comes up, I try to answer it age appropriately. However, when the questioning continues beyond what I think my child can handle, then I ask my child to lift something that I know she can't lift (like a super sized box of Tide or a bag of library books). I explain that the information that she wants to know would be a burden to her and that I'll carry the burden for her until she is ready to carry it herself.
I hope this helps you.
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cvbmom
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Mare wrote:
There is a story that I once heard about Corrie Ten Boom. When she was a youngster, traveling with her father, she asked him a question that had an adult theme to it. He reponded by asking her to carry his suitcase for him. Corrie tried lifting the suitcase and it was too heavy for her. Her father than said that there is some knowledge that is too heavy for her to carry and that he would carry that knowledge for her until she was old enough to hear it. |
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This is one of my all-time favorite lessons. I remember reading it in her book and being amazed at the simplicity and truth of it! It has always stuck with me.
Christine
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Eleanor
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Thanks for the story. Our explanations do often take the form of "you'll learn about that when you're older," and our daughter accepts this.
I was thinking more of a situation in which the topic in question (say, something relating to WWII, or the Reformation) is being studied by the rest of the family. Do you just send the little ones out of the room when something too weighty comes up -- whether in a book that's being read, or in an older sibling's question ?
Also, what if you have an early reader in the house? Do you only "strew" books that are appropriate for a 4-, 5- or 6-year-old, and keep the rest on separate shelves for the older children? Or do you tell the younger children to bring all books to you for approval before reading them?
This might come across as over-protectiveness, but I do have a basis for these concerns. As we build our collection of picture books, we've already come across quite a few high-quality, highly-recommended titles that (in our opinion) aren't suitable for little ones. Sometimes it's the topic itself; sometimes it's the wording; sometimes it's the illustrations. When we come across such books, we put them aside in a "save for later" box. That's fine for now, but what do we do when "later" comes? When one child is 8, another will be 4, and she'll be no less deserving of having her innocence sheltered and her natural sensitivities respected.
So, to clarify the original question:
How do those of you who are using a family-centered and literature-based approach, with a wide range of ages, ensure that your little ones aren't exposed to "heavy topics" before they're ready for them?
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cornomama4
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IMHO, one way may be to actually shelter the eldests a bit longer. If you wait until they're old enough to be reading and studying independently, they can learn about these topics more "discreetly". The longer you wait, the more the littles will be able to participate somewhat, and the olders will have the empathy and understanding not to expose the young ones and why.
So many others have had actual experience with this...I only have the experience of my imagination about what I'll do in about 3 years  , but I'm not sure a family-centered approach will really work all the time, much as we wish it would! I'm planning to have 2 "sets" of lesson plans (loosely used term here) for the older 2 (13 m apart) and one for the younger 2 (17m apart) who came 4 years later. But that's my situation....
I guess one thing I would say is really think about what you want your kids to learn about at what ages and WHY. Is it because you think it's time, or because the people selling the curriculum say so (jaded, I know!!) And be creative with ideas about how you can expose to an idea w/o having to include all the details until later. Like studying the great men of Rome...fine, but do we really want the kids to know why they call it a Caesarian section?
I'm with Dr. Moore: Better Late Than Early, but this IS harder in many ways because of the "pressure" to follow this or that curriculum and pace. This may not be for you and your family, but I'm postponing so much more with them than when I was a kid, because I suffer still from being exposed to things that I wasn't ready to handle. I'm probably swinging a bit much the other way with my kids, but I doubt anyone would say that if it were, say, 1950.
This post is really disjointed...I did have a clear thought, but my burned pizza has thrown me for a loop!
cm4
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Eleanor
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I'm inclined to agree on the "Better Late than Early" philosophy (although, given my daughter's enthusiasm for "school," I'm not sure I could hold her off for the next four to eight years). Independent reading for the older children also makes sense. But I'm not sure how this would incorporate the ideal of learning as a family, Charlotte Mason style, through carefully chosen picture books, narrations, unit studies, etc.
I hope that the experienced folks can shed some light on this (and that you were able to salvage some of the pizza ).
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Elena
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Maybe you just need to pre-read or preview her reading books, movies and songs etc. before she gets them. That will give you a better idea of the bumps ahead and how to avoid them. A little more time intensive for you though unfortunately.
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Martha
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Well, I won't knock anyone for doing different than me. I tend to be the odd duck out fairly often. 
I tend to think life is not so considerate of sensitivities. I grew up with the proverbial hard-knock life, so that tends to color my perspective. 
To ME, I tend to err on the side of dealing with life and all that it throws as it comes. If a child is mentally aware of things enough to have questions, I tend to just answer the questions very matter of factly as appropriate for that child. I deem that if they continue to ask deeper questions then I continue to give deeper answers.
For ex. if they ask what is abortion I might start with, "It's when a woman who has a baby in her tummy decides she doesn't want that baby to be born." For a 4 yr old, they are probably satisfied with that answer. My 6 yr old is highly likely to want to know why and then what? So I might offer a bit more info. My 12 yr old wants to know all the gory and political and religious details, so I offer even more info to him.
It honestly never occurred to me that how sensitive they are had anything to do with answering an honest question or with dealing with learning about life. They are seeking knowledge. If anything, I think their sensitivity is a great thing to have while searching for knowledge. Far too many people these days are rather callous about what they learn.
For example, abortion is talked of in sterile palitible terms so as not to offend anyone. Very analytical, an appeal to emotion is deemed a below the belt hit or not if worth contemplating. But no matter what wording is used, a child tends to know things for what they are and be sensitve to that. I think that's a good thing and I don't think talking about such things makes them less sensitive. Rather I think it teaches them what is worth being sensitive to and aware of. Shouldn't we all be sensitive, vigilant, to what is wrong and sincere in our horror of it? Wouldn't that go a long ways to helping us to avoid sins and general wrong doing?
It seems to me that to avoid that which invokes deeper emotion also leads us to avoid that which may require deeper thought and reason?
Please do NOT think I am being disparaging of anyone here. I'm not. These are my sincere questions and thoughts.  A bit of pondering out loud I suppose...
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Cay Gibson
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Martha wrote:
To ME, I tend to err on the side of dealing with life and all that it throws as it comes. |
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Right or wrong, I'm with Martha.
I was an ultra-sensitive child and didn't know how much so until I saw a reflection of myself in the two ultra-sensitive children God has blessed me with.
Like St. Therese I've had experience with anxiety. My husband, my mother, my best friend, and St. Therese's Christmas mircle helped me see how important it is to mature in our Christian faith.
I've handled sensitive issues with my children in basically the same way (because I'm basically the same person) but I would say at varying levels.
It's so hard to describe how it's done though. It's done differently for each age level they will all react differently.
What I focus on it if I don't talk to them about the reality and how Christians handle it compared to the rest of society, then life will show them...harshly so.
Let me mention picture books again. We just dealt with the death of a grandfather. Honestly I haven't had time to scurry around digging up, checking out books on dealing with death. I doubt I had time after Meme's funeral either. That's when the heart-to-heart conversations were so valuable. There was no book between me and my child. It was simply the two of us dealing with a heart issue.
Then later, through the following months, my Literature Alive! group began a list on picture books that dealt with dying. My younger girls and I have read those books throughout the past five years. We've read books dealing with grandparents who don't remember even more because that's what we were dealing with these past five years.
I like to think in some small way that reading these books...even randomly so...helped my children understand the aging process and the dying process well enough to have gotten them through the last couple of weeks so well.
They are stronger today than they were five years ago because we didn't shrink from dealing with sensitive subjects before they hit us.
If you are there for your children and talk to them, they will be fine. And, honestly, I'm seeing more and more where the mother's role of being home...just simply "being home" ...is so important, so crucial in today's world.
It doesn't matter what you're doing within the home...gardening, mopping, painting, making lesson plans, emailing a friend, etc. What's important is that you are "there". You are a support post, as important to your family as the support beam that runs down the center of your roofline.
There are jokes and complaints made about being a "doorpost". But even that doorpost serves a purpose and you don't realize the purpose until it's no longer there.
We, as mothers of large Catholic hsing families, serve an important purpose just by our presence. We say to society and to our families that we are there for them. Our children have someone to turn to 24/7. The world will say our families are spoiled. I say our families are blessed.
I grew up believing I had to work and I did...until #4 was born. I did have a best-case scenerio. An grandma-figure from our church watched my children from 8-12 N while I worked in the church office. She charged me $1.00 an hour and had raised 6 children of her own. Even today my children hug her when they see her and still call her MawMaw Leger. My children have fond, loving memories of warm childhood days spent at her house. It was God's will and I see now how kind and gentle He was to me as I walked through those early years of mothering. He gave me a woman who stayed home all her life caring for her family. And she was there for me too. And I learned from her how to be there for my family.
Another lengthy post I'm afraid. Must be why I haven't been blogging.
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Martha
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oh dear I completely agree Cay.
I suspect I'm not the only person who can't read books like de Paola's Now One Foot, Now the Other or Nanna Upstairs & Nanna Downstairs without becomming a blubbering mess.
I think that's a good thing though.
And literature that moves us and makes us think should be the kind of literature we want for our kids - right?
Afterall, I never had a grandparent in real life that I could cry over missing, but I still blubber over those books with my kids. (Who in turn either roll their eyes or blubber too. )
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Elena
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Martha wrote:
Well, I won't knock anyone for doing different than me. I tend to be the odd duck out fairly often.
It honestly never occurred to me that how sensitive they are had anything to do with answering an honest question or with dealing with learning about life. They are seeking knowledge. If anything, I think their sensitivity is a great thing to have while searching for knowledge. Far too many people these days are rather callous about what they learn.
For example, abortion is talked of in sterile palitible terms so as not to offend anyone. Very analytical, an appeal to emotion is deemed a below the belt hit or not if worth contemplating. But no matter what wording is used, a child tends to know things for what they are and be sensitve to that. I think that's a good thing and I don't think talking about such things makes them less sensitive. Rather I think it teaches them what is worth being sensitive to and aware of. Shouldn't we all be sensitive, vigilant, to what is wrong and sincere in our horror of it? Wouldn't that go a long ways to helping us to avoid sins and general wrong doing?
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That seems like a reasonable approach as well. I do remember once that I did a sewing class project for the jr. high girls at church and we were going to make fetal demise pouches for little preemies who passed but were too small for regular clothes. One of the girls had never know that a baby could die, let alone die before it had a chance to live. And her Catholic mother had never told her about abortion. Mom was a bit upset that I covered some of that in class, but then again, I was under the impression that the girls there knew about things like that!!
When my baby died, my then 3 and 4 year olds knew about it and we talked about it. It hasn't seemed to have hurt them in any way.
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Mackfam
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I'm extremely sensitive myself, and I've always believed it to be a gift. I know not to sit down with "The Match Girl" without an entire box of kleenex.
I strew picture books throughout the house - and they are available for every age group. They do spark questions. Quite simply, I go with the flow. If asked a sensitive question, I answer honestly and provide as little information as I can to answer the direct question. If my child continues probing with questions, I continue answering honestly. If an answer must be given that is hard to hear or hard to say, I always encourage a prayer of reparation. Something simple and from the heart..."Lord, I know You must hurt when one of your children isn't loved, I'm sorry. I love you."
We do not shelter from difficult subjects because if we're following our dear Lord, we're going to encounter Crosses, and sometimes those Crosses are very hard to look at and even harder to pick up. There is evil in the world. It doesn't take much digging to see it - often it is smacking us in the face as soon as we leave the domestic sanctuary. If I am confronted by my older child about a subject that perhaps she is ready for a more mature answer, but my younger children aren't ready to hear, I have no problem asking her to wait and remind me again in private. She never forgets.
Often, a prayer to the child's guardian angel helps me too.
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Martha
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| Posted: July 21 2008 at 3:39pm | IP Logged
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Mackfam wrote:
| If I am confronted by my older child about a subject that perhaps she is ready for a more mature answer, but my younger children aren't ready to hear, I have no problem asking her to wait and remind me again in private. |
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ah and I meant to share a perspective on those older children too. Again, I'm tainted by my own expereinces. A rough childhood, but I'm also married to a man who is a wonderful and loving man, but not a religous man and not a Catholic.
Now I'm not terminaly sick and I have reasonable hopes of living to see an old age full of grown children and grandbabies, BUT even so - mom can't always be there to explain or defend. This is true regardless of family size or economics.
Cay pointed out how vital just literally physically being their for our kids is - I wholeheartedly agree. But yet another blessing, or at least I hope it's a blessing, are those older siblings.
Maybe it's not so good to hold those older siblings back from mature subjects because they are often the other guideposts in their younger siblings lives? I can easily see times already when an older sibling has informed or corrected a younger sibling. No those aren't fish, they're tadpoles and this is how they get in the pond... NO! That was not nice, that's wrong and you better stop it!... Knowledge of good and bad should be shared to some extent, shouldn't it?
I certainly don't want them to be surrogate parents by any stretch, but I do think that it's a good thing these younger children have more than just me to guide them on the straight and narrow. I can't always be there, but God willing, at least ONE of their 8 siblings will let them know when they are straying or messing up and support them when they are going good and right!
ETA: I occurs to me that I make it sound like my dh is real useless in moral teachings and he most certainly is not. He's a wonderful, kind and generous man. But if my kids were to ask him why birth control is wrong for example, I think the best he'd come up with is, "It's not, but what couple wouldn't want a baby?!" Granted he's NEVER said that to or around any of the kids, he tells them to ask their mother. But he has no religous stance on many things and would not debate as though he does, if that can be understood? I guess since I have ZERO relgious family and my dh isn't catholic, I feel considerable pressure to give as much grounding to all my children as soon as possible.
oh geez. I feel like I'm just digging my wifely hole deeper. I'm going to click post and hope for the best...
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Tonya
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This is a difficult situation for those of us who have a spread of ages. When we sit down at the dinner table with teens (and now twenties) some of the conversations that come up are fairly deep and can include topics that I would rather that my younger ones didn't know about. However, how can my husband and I stop giving guidance to the older ones if we don't let these topics come up? My oldest daughter has been active in the pro-life movement since she was sixteen and it broke my heart to hear my youngest pray for the "Poor 'borted babies." He didn't know what it meant but he did know that babies had died and that we had to pray for them. Do I wish he had hadn't heard the term abortion at such a young age? Absolutely, but with a large family, I don't know how you can get around that.
As for schooling, there again I don't know how you can always shield your younger ones. My oldest son always wants to discuss (and debate!) his subjects, especially history. But I don't know that that is always bad. I got a chuckle recently when my younger boys were discussing whether the revolutionary war was a just war or not. They had been listening to their older brother and had learned from him.
BTW, Elena, I don't know if you remember me but I used to belong to ARCHE before I moved to Pittsburgh. Our boys used to play chess years ago.
Tonya
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Eleanor
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Thank you for sharing your experiences. I was expecting to see some responses along the lines of Tonya's. It does seem as if there isn't a whole lot you can do about it -- just pray and hope for the best, and know that the little ones are also getting many benefits from their older siblings.
On the other hand, it's come as a surprise to hear so many posters say that it isn't a problem at all -- i.e., that they don't believe in trying to shelter their young children from difficult subjects.
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The innocence of childhood is a great privilege (some would say it's a right). Of course, no child can be sheltered completely, and some have to live with big problems, like a mentally ill parent, radiation sickness, concentration camps, homelessness and the death of their mother, or the bombing of their city. Our children (thank God) have been spared these particular experiences, and I see no reason to voluntarily teach them about them at this age. They're too young to learn about the full extent of human evil, or take on the suffering of the whole world.
I do think these are -- for the most part -- well-written picture books, which could enrich an older child's learning about these subjects. (For instance, my class studied the story of Sadako and the paper cranes when I was 10.) But they aren't something I'd make available to the whole family.
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Martha
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Eleanor wrote:
| On the other hand, it's come as a surprise to hear so many posters say that it isn't a problem at all -- i.e., that they don't believe in trying to shelter their young children from difficult subjects. I would have thought that we all did this, to varying degrees, based on our own convictions and circumstances. |
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I wouldn't say there's no problem at all. Ideally I wouldn't have to deal with these things at all. But I and my children are pretty far removed from the garden of Eden, so I do the best I can.
Eleanor wrote:
| at DH's work, and some people at our table began discussing a news story about a school principal who had a "sex change" and continued working at the school. I excused us from the table, and took the children for a walk. Would those who don't believe in "sheltering" have stuck around, finished their fries, and used this as a teaching moment? I'm finding this a little hard to understand. |
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I might have. Were my children even aware of the conversation? Were they being vulgar in their discriptions? Most likely, where MY dh works, if my dc noticed, a child or two would have loudly declared something along the lines of that was disgusting and just plain crazy and WHY would anyone do THAT?! in horrified voices. At which point, hopefully, the adults of the discussion would have red-faced and hurriedly changed the subject. OR I would have told them my views on such a sad and pitiful state of affairs and they would have proceeded to shun my family as religious fanatics.
My 4 yr old? He wouldn't have known what they were talking about other than to be glad not to have to go to school all day. He's heard my dh's coworkers talking about getting IVF with their same-sex spouse and didn't have a clue. Now, my 13 yr old was shocked enough to blurt, "What?! God didn't make people to fit together that way!"  And we were duly shunned the rest of the awards dinner for being A. coddling homeschoolers who don't teach their kids such things are normal and B. Catholic and C. anti-gay, anti-IVF, and anti-birth control!
Eleanor wrote:
| Anyway, whatever conclusions others might have come to, we do believe in sheltering our young children from difficult subjects, as much as is reasonably possible. |
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And that's great!  God made you the mother of your children for a reason, because it's for YOU to be the mother they need. My children may need a very different mother. My goal is not to be the perfect mom to everyone else's expectations. It's to be the mother my children need me to be in order for them to become all that God wills for them to be.
Eleanor wrote:
| We aren't planning to invite in any more, except in a very gradual way as our children become more mature. |
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I don't think anyone has to go sending invitations or is suggesting that anyone else needs to do it either. I didn't invite that lesbian couple to our table, but there they sat and right there and then is where I dealt with it. That's pretty much how I deal with most things.
Eleanor wrote:
| The innocence of childhood is a great privilege (some would say it's a right). Of course, no child can be sheltered completely, and some have to live with big problems, like a mentally ill parent, radiation sickness, concentration camps, homelessness and the death of their mother, or the bombing of their city. Our children (thank God) have been spared these particular experiences, and I see no reason to voluntarily teach them about them at this age. |
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hmm. And I see nothing wrong with you doing that. I do however wonder how children are to learn about the purpose and grace to be found in any of the beatitudes if they are not exposed to the sadness in our world that makes them neccessary of all compassionate christians? And if they have never heard, read, seen such things, how can they be expected to cope when things happen as they do to some extent in everyone's life? My children have seen the death of 3 grandparents and a friend. Much consolation and understanding came from reading about these things before they happened. For example, those de Paola books were great. They were sad most certainly, but the family value, the hope, and knowledge that there is purpose and healing in caring for another really made them much more comfortable in dealing with it in real life. My mil was adament that the children not visit her mother when she was dying because she wanted to spare them the sadness and sufferring of seeing great grandmother that way. But after dh and I talked about it, we decided to disagree with her and take them anyways. Great Grandmother didn't know any of us, but the kids weren't scared of her and they gave a tremendous amount of joy to their great grandfather who hadn't had a reason to laugh in weeks. I could have avoided that suffering for my children, but I'm glad I didn't.
Eleanor wrote:
| They're too young to learn about the full extent of human evil, or take on the suffering of the whole world. |
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Now no one is saying they should learn all that at all! I answer their questions simply and as they come. It's not like if my 4 yr old asked what abortion was I'd run to pull up a graphic on the internet or something and explain it all in detail to him.
I don't think we take on the sufferring of the whole world by learning about the sufferring of others. I think it lessens the sufferring of everyone. My children know that when we learn of a sufferring, we learn we are not alone in combating it! If no one is willing to face it or let their lives be troubled by it - how are we to alleviate it? Are we to simply fend for ourselves?
Eleanor wrote:
I do think these are -- for the most part -- well-written picture books, which could enrich an older child's learning about these subjects. (For instance, my class studied the story of Sadako and the paper cranes when I was 10.) But they aren't something I'd make available to the whole family.
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I wouldn't have had any of those books when my oldest was 4 yrs old either. But he isn't 4 anymore and the home library reflects that. I don't censor much in my own home. If I think it's not appropriate, then it probably isn't allowed in the door at all.
Again, I think I actually agree with you more than you think. I don't feel like I throw my dc to the wolves of sufferring, but I do feel it's okay to let them know the wolves exist. And that they are not alone in combating them.
As a side note, would you let your children learn about St. Maxilian Kolbe? If so, why is that okay and Anne Frank is not? Why is learning about the sufferring in the bible and saints of history more okay to expose them to than the sufferring of their modern day mankind?
Again, I'm NOT being snarky and I certainly am not telling you you should change your parenting to what I do. I am sincerely asking how one of what might be a very different style goes about discerning it in daily practice?
I'll also add that many things were never exposed to my oldest at that age simply because it wasn't an issue for him as it is now for my current 4 yr old. When my oldest was 4yrs old, I also had 3 and 2 yr old boys and was pregnant with a 4th. I know I must have done things, but I don't remember ever leaving the house much at all his first 5 years of life. 
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Martha
mama to 7 boys & 4 girls
Yes, they're all ours!
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Eleanor
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Martha wrote:
| My 4 yr old? He wouldn't have known what they were talking about other than to be glad not to have to go to school all day. He's heard my dh's coworkers talking about getting IVF with their same-sex spouse and didn't have a clue. |
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This is a perfect example of what I meant about children being so different from one another. My 4-year-old would absolutely pick up on that. She notices almost as many things as my husband and I do, and some things we don't. And she asks questions. If we give a vague or partial explanation, she'll stop asking about it, but she won't forget. Months later, something will jog her memory, and she'll bring it up again. On the up side, by then I've usually had time to come up with a better answer, even if it's simply, "you'll learn more about that when you're older."
[removed details]
Maybe "sensitive" doesn't quite cover it, but she's definitely more... something... than most children her age. )
Martha wrote:
I do however wonder how children are to learn about the purpose and grace to be found in any of the beatitudes if they are not exposed to the sadness in our world that makes them neccessary of all compassionate christians?
(...)
My children know that when we learn of a sufferring, we learn we are not alone in combating it! If no one is willing to face it or let their lives be troubled by it - how are we to alleviate it? Are we to simply fend for ourselves? |
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I don't think anyone has suggested that children can (or should) be shielded from all suffering whatsoever. Even if we were able to shelter them from "adult" problems, they would still have the inevitable childhood hurts and sadnesses to learn from. And this is as it should be. All those skinned knees, unkind playmates, and belly-up goldfish are the "training ground" for handling bigger problems later on. They're child-sized suitcases, so to speak.
I'm not sure what's meant by "no one is willing to face it or let their lives be troubled by it." If it's about the children, we're just talking about the first few years of our their lives. They'll still have plenty of time to concern themselves with these issues, once they're a little older. In the Church's eyes, children don't even reach the age of reason until age seven or so. There's a whole lifetime of learning that comes after the "equipment" is in place.
Martha wrote:
| Again, I think I actually agree with you more than you think. |
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I don't think I think you disagree with me as much as you think I think. I'm not out to scrutinize anyone else's philosophy. It just came as a surprise to me that the concept of "sheltering young children" would draw criticism from multiple posters on a Catholic homeschooling board. Maybe we're just using different terminology. These phrases can become so loaded.
I think we all want to protect our children, though we might not necessarily agree on where to draw the line in the sand.
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| As a side note, would you let your children learn about St. Maxilian Kolbe? If so, why is that okay and Anne Frank is not? |
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We would gladly share one of the many wonderful stories that can be told about his life: his childhood conversion from wildness to piety, his rocket ship designs, his newsletter, the founding of the Militia Immaculatae, etc. I'm sure the children would love to hear about his "spiritual army" under the leadership of our Blessed Mother. They might also find it interesting to discover that their mother is a member of said army. And they're not too young to join in the fight for goodness and against badness, by learning how to use the main weapon:
"O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!"
If, for some reason, they happened to ask how Father Kolbe died, I would probably just say that he died during a war, and that he was killed by soldiers who "didn't want to do what God wanted" (hat tip to Catholic Children's Treasure Box for this very useful phrase), and leave it at that. But our emphasis would be on other aspects of his story which would be more understandable to our little ones, and which, in the Church's eyes, are just as important as the circumstances of his death.
It would be pretty hard to do anything comparable to that with Anne Frank, since, from our perspective, her captivity and death are her story. A more analogous case would be that of St. Maria Goretti, since her story is inextricably entwined with the sin of unchastity -- which is right up there with Nazism on the list of "topics I'd rather not have to explain to my 4-year-old".
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Cay Gibson
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Eleanor wrote:
| They'll still have plenty of time to concern themselves with these issues, once they're a little older. In the Church's eyes, children don't even reach the age of reason until age seven or so. There's a whole lifetime of learning that comes after the "equipment" is in place. |
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I agree, Eleanor.
Eleanor wrote:
| It just came as a surprise to me that the concept of "sheltering young children" would draw criticism from multiple posters on a Catholic homeschooling board. Maybe we're just using different terminology. |
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I haven't seen any criticism but perhaps I'm overlooking something that was said. I think we're all on the same page and I think we all handle it according to our family dynamics and the personalities of our individual children.
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Cay Gibson
"There are 49 states, then there is Louisiana." ~ Chef Emeril
wife to Mark '86
mom to 5
Cajun Cottage Under the Oaks
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Martha
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Cay wrote:
| I haven't seen any criticism but perhaps I'm overlooking something that was said. I think we're all on the same page and I think we all handle it according to our family dynamics and the personalities of our individual children. |
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 Yep. What she said.
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Martha
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Eleanor
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| Posted: July 22 2008 at 10:01am | IP Logged
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Looking back at the wide range of responses to the original question (which was a fairly practical one, about how to deal with the challenges posed by "heavy" picture books), I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that we are all on the same page.
But perhaps we are in the same library.
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Heavy topics & sensitive little ones
