A kid’s natural reaction to a parent hiding texts is to find them and read them and pay special attention. I don’t think hiding the texts more carefully, or telling the kid straight out “You may not read these books until you’re older.” achieves substantively different results.
f there are “dangerous books”, you should read them with the kid. Make your own emotional reactions and counterarguments visible. If you’ve acquired some immunity to these texts, the right thing to do is attempt to communicate the immunity, not to introduce some kind of censorship.
Or better yet, just don’t keep it anywhere visibly in the house. If you need it for something, keep it on the shelf in your locked study, amongst a whole bunch of other books.
In general, just remove it from their attention as much as possible, bot physically and psychologically.
To provide some anecdotal evidence, my parents encouraged me to be intellectually curious, and they left plenty of their books in open sight, but I had plenty of books of my own that looked much more interesting than theirs.
My parents also encouraged me to be intellectually curious, and left all of our large number of books in open sight, and I suspect that some of the things I read when I was young probably would have distressed them. If not the books about child development and adolescent behavior and so on, then probably things like this book which I read when I was fourteen, which, had it had to clear any sort of ratings system, would probably have been rated X even if all the content of a sexual nature had been excised.
If there are “dangerous books”, you should read them with the kid. Make your own emotional reactions and counterarguments visible. If you’ve acquired some immunity to these texts, the right thing to do is attempt to communicate the immunity, not to introduce some kind of censorship.
I agree completely with this position. However, since I expected it to be the position of many here, I wanted to ensure that the alternative was at least available for commenters to attack and defend.
A kid’s natural reaction to a parent hiding texts is to find them and read them and pay special attention. I don’t think hiding the texts more carefully, or telling the kid straight out “You may not read these books until you’re older.” achieves substantively different results.
f there are “dangerous books”, you should read them with the kid. Make your own emotional reactions and counterarguments visible. If you’ve acquired some immunity to these texts, the right thing to do is attempt to communicate the immunity, not to introduce some kind of censorship.
If you want to stop someone from reading a book, there’s generally better ways than telling them not to do it.
That aside, kids can be surprisingly dumb, I wouldn’t rely on them reaching the right conclusions even with assistance.
What are the “better ways” that you allude to?
Unless you plan to be around to correct them forever, I think there’s a point when you do have to trust the next generation.
For the majority of kids, the best way to stop them from reading a book is simply to leave it on a bookshelf and not mention it.
Or better yet, just don’t keep it anywhere visibly in the house. If you need it for something, keep it on the shelf in your locked study, amongst a whole bunch of other books.
In general, just remove it from their attention as much as possible, bot physically and psychologically.
I suspect this is rather less likely to be effective when you’re raising a kid who you actively encourage to be intellectually curious.
To provide some anecdotal evidence, my parents encouraged me to be intellectually curious, and they left plenty of their books in open sight, but I had plenty of books of my own that looked much more interesting than theirs.
My parents also encouraged me to be intellectually curious, and left all of our large number of books in open sight, and I suspect that some of the things I read when I was young probably would have distressed them. If not the books about child development and adolescent behavior and so on, then probably things like this book which I read when I was fourteen, which, had it had to clear any sort of ratings system, would probably have been rated X even if all the content of a sexual nature had been excised.
It shouldn’t be on the bookshelf in the first place.
Parents are dumb.
I agree completely with this position. However, since I expected it to be the position of many here, I wanted to ensure that the alternative was at least available for commenters to attack and defend.