But Leave Out The Bloody Bits

Edward is very literal. When he climbs into bed with us I say, good morning, Edward, how did you sleep?

He gets a faint crease in his brow as he considers the question and then says, "I slept in my race car bed under my blue blanket."

Ah. Well. Yes.

When Caroline joins us half an hour later she says, "I slept very well thank you Mommy. How did you sleep?" If she's feeling a little picante she might add, "Dormir Mama? Bueno?" Never let it be said that almost complete ignorance of the Spanish language ever deters her from speaking it. She is like a British tourist from the 1920s; all stout constitution, easy phrases and an indomitable sense of her own right to be understood. I find her vastly entertaining and I now spend hours looking up words for her after my admission that I had no idea how to say "turkey" in Spanish led to her lying flat on the kitchen floor, staring wordlessly at the ceiling while tears trickled down her cheeks. It was the most effective tantrum, like, ever. I actually felt guilty.

(Pavo! Donde esta el pavo? El pavo esta en el patio. Poor Caroline. I took French. Steve took first year Spanish, true, but he took it four times. And Patrick thinks everyone should speak English; which either means he is a curmudgeon ahead of his time or the modern day isolationists are tracking with third graders. Did you know that a previous iteration called themselves the Know Nothing Party? They were worried to death about the Irish and all the... parades they might throw. or something.)

In truth Caroline sleeps like a whirling dervish and every few days she changes her mind about how she wants to do this. Sometimes it is upside-down on her chair with her head hanging over the edge. Sometimes she crashes in her fairy tent. I've found her alseep under her bed and I have found her in a dresser drawer. For a week she slept in her closet in a nest constructed out of old baby clothes. Lately she has taken as many blankets as she can find, laid them on the floor next to her bed and then she sleeps on top of them wrapped in a towel.

As Caroline gets older we will need to actively find safe ways for her to thrill seek, that's all I'm saying. The child likes experiences.

My mom and my brother and his family start arriving today and they will be here through the weekend. I'm very excited - it's been more than a year since we've all been together. I'm also a little disorganized - I started considering things like pillows this morning and realized that the last time we had a full house we also had two proto-people in cribs and now Caroline and Edward are full-fledged lodgers and they use enough bedding for six (see Caroline, above) so I have to figure out what I am going to do. Clearly Caroline will be giving up the princess and the pea act while our guests are here but even so I'm not sure I have enough sheets and whatnot. And I haven't been grocery shopping in a while so tonight is looking like a Top Chef episode where they are given a jar of pickled okra, a bottle of maple syrup and a wok. And Saturday we're hosting an egg hunt/dinner thing for my family plus some friends and I haven't worked out any details for that either. And last night I chipped my front tooth (a year ago I chipped the other front tooth on a Charms Blowpop - this time I did it walking up the stairs) so I have an emergency dental appointment in.... damn it. Forty minutes.

So this is less of a post than a Mad Lib in which I start a topic and you help me finish it in the comments. The topic is: would you read the actual words in a violent children's book or would you fumble for an explanation of the pictures that involves less death?

What, you say? You ask if there is such a thing as a violent picture book?

Funny you should mention it. I took Caroline and Edward to the library yesterday where they picked out some books, among them a couple of things by Lucy Cousins. You know Lucy Cousins, she writes and illustrates books about Maisy the mouse and her monosyllabic friends. The pictures look so simple you think you could do it yourself until you try to paint a mouse vacuuming and then you realize that there is actually an art to her art. Anyway, Caroline is always up for a nice Maisy book so we threw some into the bag and when we got home I saw that one of them was actually a collection of eight classic fairy tales illustrated by Cousins and I thought, oh how nice, classic fairy tales.

So I started with Red Riding Hood and they were, indeed, classic - extremely classic - as exemplified by page 17 where the wolf swallows the grandmother. Then he eats Red Riding Hood and then the woodsman appears and cuts off the wolf's head which goes flying - I kid you not - onto the next page; which I suppose is a happy ending for everyone except the wolf because RR and her grandmother leap out of the wolf (undigested - how nice) like Zeus and his siblings.

Gruesome. Maisy! Who would have thought the little mouse was so bloodthirsty?

I do know that this is how the stories actually went - back when the Brothers Grimm trotted from mountain to mountain collecting folk tales - just as I know that in the real Little Mermaid she commits suicide (can you imagine the 20th anniversary DVD from Disney, now with alternate ending.) But I was shocked to find it in a book whose pictures so clearly spoke to very little kids. And I fudged the story and flipped past the page as fast as I could and when the next wolf (a relation perhaps) started eating the three little pigs I lied and said that they ran to the airport and when the third little pig made wolf stew I said he was getting a bath.

So that's my topic for the day and to broaden it a bit I guess I feel like I insulate my children from unpleasantness far more than I was ever sheltered and I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not. I grew up watching the nightly news and I grew up just fine (although perhaps a little nervous about nuclear proliferation) and one could argue that generations of German children knew exactly what happened to those pigs and they turned out fine too (I mean, apart from starting a couple of world wars.)

Would you have read the actual descriptions to three year olds? Do you think children should be told about tsunamis and reactors and famines? Are children today more sheltered than previously and is that a good thing why or why not use your blue books.

PS Damn tooth.

PPS My family is coming! WHEEEEEE!

PPPS I got Muzzy from the library and it has got to be the WEIRDEST set of videos ever created. That said, Caroline loves them. Any suggestions for Spanish language stuff for her? CDs or Dvds?

Comments

[Clarity]

I think it completely depends on the kid and the family more than any one size fits all rule. Some kids, like my son, would find that book absolutely hysterical and not be disturbed in the least, but my daughter would probably have had nightmares for years!

PS good luck with the tooth, I have to do that on Thursday and I'm terrified already!

[Lisa]

My three and four-year old LOVE that Lucy Cousins book. It is one of my favorite children's books. I did pause at first when I saw the explicit illustrtrations but I am a believer in real fairy tales (maybe because I'm German :) ) Neither one of my kids ever objected to these fairy tales. I do shelter them in a lot of other ways. My son is almost 5 and has never been to a movie theater because he is very easily scared by anything on TV. Many Dora episodes are too scary for him - Swiper sends him running out of the room. I consistently gloss over news stories and would never let them watch the news on TV. But I think there is something about the style of the Lucy Cousins illustrations and the comfort of curling up with a book that makes these fairy tales manageable.

[Jenn]

Not sure what this adds, other than more anecdata for the "you really have to be the judge of what your kids can handle, but some censoring is probably smart at least until they are old enough to have a firm grasp on reality and maybe not even then" sentiment, but I remember as a child being comforted by the thought that since that I had dark hair, the vampires who roamed around our house at night wouldn't be able to see me and suck all my blood out.

I also remember being convinced that I had every condition mentioned on the news or in commercials. In retrospect, perhaps a little more censoring on my parents' part might have been a good thing for me. But my sister (who is younger) always dealt with that stuff a lot better than I did, with less worrying and a lot more eye-rolling.

Isn't it awful that the answer to so many parenting questions starts with "it depends?"

[HereWeGoAJen]

When I was growing up, I had a reading comprehension level far above my emotional comprehensive level. So I read all the books in our house, including a two old volumes of Grimm's fairy tales that my grandmother got us at a garage sale. Terrifying. When the Little Mermaid Disney movie came out and someone gave it to us as a gift, I sobbed and sobbed when my mom tried to make me watch it. I was scarred for years, until I finally broke down and watched it and discovered that Disney changed the story a little bit. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to WATCH such a terrifying tale.

In other words, my opinion is censor away! I was six or seven when I was reading Grimm and I was scared until I was eleven or twelve. Children have really good imaginations already. We don't need to provide scary fodder.

[Linda]

You have extremely bright children – Caroline is speaking Spanish in combinations she’s inferring for herself. If she understands the concept of “pretend” then I’d say explain to her that they are stories about bad things and not real and then read away – I think you’re shortchanging her if you don’t and considering her propensity for sleeping with danger so to speak, a little pause before wandering into the dark woods to consider if there may be wolves is only a good thing. For Edward…ask him. Does he want to hear a scary story that’s pretend and not real or will it bother him? If he says yes, pick the least gruesome and see how it goes.

[Laurie A]

Funny you should ask about editing...I've been on an Usborne book kick and have taken a bunch out of the library for my five year old. I edited the part of Ali Baba where the tailor sews the brother (who is dead and cut up into four parts) back together to read that "he sews him a suit".

However, in retrospect, while reading the Usborne Stories from the Old Testament, I didn't edit it and every story has someone being killed or kicked out of the family or sold into slavery. It never dawned on me to edit these stories although I knew they were violent. Subconsciously I guess I found them acceptable.

[lb]

I always edit. In fact, my 10yo just recently discovered that the Old Woman who lives in a shoe didn't actually "kiss" her children all soundly and put them to bed. Ahem. I feel like the world is nasty and horrible enough without children's literature adding to the weight of it. People are horrified at the thought of children watching violent movies - shouldn't books be the same? I try to give them what they are ready for at the time.

[rosie]

I love you so I'm sorry I'm annoying.

Prone means face down. "Staring at the ceiling"?

Supine?

I get hung up on the little things.

Love you :)

[Kathleen]

Death, violence, gore, etc. get read as is to my kids (5 and 3.5). Very problematic gender stuff gets edited or at least commented on. Compulsory heterosexuality, marriage, happily ever after, that's the stuff I leave out. They have no clue what a wedding is. Or marriage, for that matter. That's the scary shit, IMO.

[parodie]

A suggestion to tuck away for when Caroline needs to thrill-seek: circus school. Dunno if there's one near you - but you could look into it; something like that would allow her to test the limits of earth-bound existence with low- to no- chance of actual injury. :)

[vanessa]

1. Caroline. Gymnastics.
2. I'd read the things. I think one of the reasons children's books exist is to expose kids to that kind of stuff and to give them a release for things they don't have words for yet. I did some research on this for my kid lit class, let me know if you want more info :)

[Craftyashley]

Yay for Muzzy! I always wanted them as a kid and saw them on commercials.

[Arlene]

Studied German in college with a professor whose key interest was German fairy tales. She said that they were told to frighten children into behaving. Having been raised by a second generation German mother, this sounds true. Scare the heck out of your babies so they don't do anything to disturb you. Peace and quiet for the adults, nightmares for the kiddies.

[Katie]

We have the Lucy Cousins book. Read it the first time not realizing what we were getting into (just fairy tales, right?) and my daughter had nightmares and insisted the book live on our bookshelf not hers. We eventually calmed her down by reminding her we live in a brick house (thank goodness!) and so do all of our neighbors, so there are no wolves around us because everyone is safe in their brick houses. Works for us. And reading both the original and disney version of the stories has helped her understand that they are just stories and can be made up and edited at will.

[rosie_kate]

I do not skip the gory details of life, but that book sounds maybe a little too gruesome for my taste, and well, not actual "life" anyway.

We love Muzzy! Weird, yes, but genius! It's a very simply-told story that uses a natural language progression. My only beef is that in the vhs version (which is what we have because I'm cheap), there is only British English. As a result, my son ends up with some funny words ("Mom, I'm very clevah!"). But in the dvds, you can choose American English, and several other languages as well.

[azita]

Loved hearing about the "Know Nothing Party" it reminds me of its (fictional) opposite, "The Jackass Monthly"... and jumping on to fairy tales, they are indeed gruesome but my little 3 year old nephew takes all the violence and gore with matter-of-fact aplomb if not delight even as he finds the wolf to be very "scary" ... anywho

[kris (lower case)]

i would think by now everyone knows that in about all disney movies one (or both) parents are absent... sometimes the absence is explained (nemo, bambi) sometimes not (toy story).. peter pan is about the only disney movie i can think of with both parents. edit what you think you should but i think caroline can take about any story...edward, maybe not. and i just have to add for the person who mentioned the tiger mom.. people are asian.. rugs and food are oriental.

[Alexicographer]

Great topic. I don't know. A lot of (little) kid lit (and tv) seems frighteningly insipid to me, and I'm told that the frightening stuff gives them opportunities to work it out / think through it, but I struggle with what the right balance is, and that's with a kid who's pretty unafraid, knock wood. Much of my DH's family is inclined just to leave the TV on, and considering what one can see on there, this horrifies me ... I do worry less about the books than the video of murder victims (etc.), both real and fictional.

Though its positioning of the one little boy character as the naughty one bugs me a bit, my son's quite enjoying SkippyJon Jones, and it blends some Spanish (and a funny and charming story line about pretend/real) into the text -- Caroline might like it.

[Sara]

My 3-y-old daughter is obsessed with Spanish too, and regularly stumps me. I really don't get it. We're raising her bilingual in English and another (non-Spanish) language, so you'd really think that would be enough. Kids are weird. I blame Dora.

[S]

I grew up with the gently altered Americanized fairy tails. RR, 3 pigs, standard issue stuff. Picked up a nice older ( much older ) British fairy tail book on ebay. It was a total surprise, we've been coddled way too much. EVERY story had great amounts of rather gruesome violence. One story had people ( or trolls ? ) put in bags and tossed into the river. We finally made a game of how many deaths we expected in each evenings story. He was 8 at the time. Kind of funny at the time, can't imagine reading those to a Wee one just before lights out.

[Amanda]

My husband grew up with that fine classic German book "Der Struwwelpeter" in the house, featuring one (illustrated) vignette about a boy whose thumbs get cut off because of his thumb-sucking. He is still traumatized by the memory of this picture. His mother is from Germany, and is a dear gentle soul who unaccountably thinks this book is a valuable part of the preschool years; when she gave us our own copy, my husband made it disappear...

[Chi-An]

Heh heh, we recently got the same Lucy Cousins book out of the library. I was a little taken aback but my 4 year old didn't bat an eyelash when I read it as written. She didn't find it scary at all.

On the other hand, we took her to her first in-theater movie (_Rango_) a few weeks ago and she had to be carried out of the theater in the first 3 minutes, a sobbing mess. Books and movies are very different experiences for kids.

And omigod, Alyssa, I also have a Miranda that does the same thing with her blankets as Caroline. Maybe it's linked to the name?

[Chaya]

We edit and retell everything. Olivia reconsiders her sassy tone. Max and Ruby learn to share. Why is Babar's mother lying on the ground? *Quickly turns page* And then Babar went to the city!

[tgsdmom]

News? No. Not to the twins, definitely. Expose a kid Patrick's age? A bit, depending on the subject.
Scary stories? Generally yes. Depends on the child.

I was reluctant to expose my first child to Snow White for many years (until K or 1st grade). And rightly so. His siblings saw it with him with no problem from age 0 (or thereabouts).

We read Peter and the Wolf, Red-Riding-Hood and other fairy tales with no (known) bad effects. (Not the original Little Mermaid, because I remember it was hard for me as a child to read). We even read them (at about age 5) the book "Struwwelpeter" by Heinrich Hoffmann. Scary yet funny.

Kids have fears. I was scared of witches as a young girl. Kids ask about prospective deaths - of their parents and of their own. Scary stories are (supposed) to be a way to confront those fears. Generally, kids deal with them better than their over-protective parents think (including myself, of course). However, some kids are more sensitive and this should be taken into consideration.

[Hetty Fauxvert]

I do shelter our little guys (4 y.o. twins) from excessive gruesomeness. I have one tough guy and one who is easily scared, so I err on the side of caution. I love the classic fairy tales (yay Jung!) but I think they are for slightly older children, starting about age 5, I think. Slightly older kids often luuuuuuuv some gruesomeness, and it seems to be a part of normal human growth to be exposed to some of that. But when I was a very young child, I was forcibly exposed to scary movies and stories by my several-years-older brother, and had horrific nightmares as a result. Into my TWENTIES. So. Not goin' there, at least till later.

As for real things, like tsunamis and people deliberately flying planes into buildings, yes, if they see me reacting to a story on TV or newspaper and want to know what the problem is, I give them a simplified version they can handle. And if I think the people are truly evil (as in, terrorists, etc.) I go ahead and tell my kids that the people who did the act are very, very bad people. I think a value judgment is appropriate even at a young age.

However, I also sugarcoat things like massive earthquakes and tsunamis by telling them that it is very unlikely to happen here so don't worry about it. That seems to keep them from obsessing about it or dreaming about it. (And then I follow it with an earthquake drill! LOL! Luckily the boys aren't terribly logical thinkers yet. :)

[Jennifer]

I have a version of Aesop's Fables that's quite gruesome in places. In the goose that laid the golden egg, the farmer cuts the goose wide open to get out all the eggs at once. The version I grew up with, they *sold* the goose. Imagine my surprise upon reading that aloud to the 6 and 3 year olds....

[Kelly]

Oh I can comment about this! I have 2 boys (6 and 4) who're very sheltered from violence. When angry, my oldest used to "punish" me while he sat in the quiet spot by taking off his socks. ;) This year we bought the Disney video Planet Earth (Disney! safe!) and when it comes to the part where the wolf is chasing down the caribou I had a conundrum. I opted for a tale and explained that the wolf had won the race. About a month later, after the umpteenth time watching it and being asked what the wolf would do next I explained that it would likely eat it and that lots of animals eat other animals. They took a bit to digest it but now, some months later, have absorbed the fact that some animals eat other animals ("Even the Mommies and the babies?!") and that's ok.

A few weeks ago I showed my oldest some video of the tsunami (it was a spelling word for that week) that hit Japan and he was distressed at seeing it but I think it was good to show him.

I think children are much more sensitized to violence these days and don't know if that's good or not. Won't know til they're older. I'm hoping we can slowly, and in a controlled manner, introduce them to the darker sides of life. We're hoping to set in the core value of respect for others first.

[K]

We do the same thing as Anne above when it comes to superhero books and the three year old. I'd prefer he didn't read them at all, but we just make up words ("And this guy wanted to hit, but Iron Man asked for hugs instead. Hugs are great and hands are not for hitting!"), so in this case--thumbs up for being illiterate!

[LMM]

I just had to read the original Brothers Grimm for my book group. GOOD LORD. Lucy asked me to read some of it to her and I must say I got quite good at sprint-reading-ahead and "tweaking" the story accordingly. Sheesh.

Get "Interrupting Chicken" for your kids. Hysterical and fixes this problem right up.

[cindy w]

My version of Little Red Riding Hood is that the wolf locked Grandma in the bathroom, but Grandma had her cell phone with her, so just as the wolf was about to eat Little Red Riding Hood, the police came in & put that Big Bad Wolf in jail.

I'm such a wimp. I can't stand the idea of telling my sweet & innocent little girl the real Brothers Grimm version. (And yes, my husband makes fun of me for this. He tried to tell our daughter the real version once, and she was all "No! That's not how it goes, Daddy!" So I guess I win.)

[elana]

i have twins with sensitive personalities (now 5!). i used to censor some of the scarier parts in books about death, destruction, etc. now i leave it in and answer questions. but still avoiding the news and various other real, current horrors. we'll get to that eventually, but i know it would cause anxiety so we shelter them for now.

[Bill Dueber]

My then-three-year-old saw the old Disney "Three Little Pigs" cartoon and was freaked out about wolves for about six months. He was always very indirect, though. "Daddy, where do wolves live? Daddy, how hard is it to climb up on a roof? Daddy, how big is our chimney? Boy, Daddy, it's windy outside! Do you think the house will fall down?"

[Pam L]

I don't know about Spanish language DVD's but when my kids were taking Spanish one teacher said one of the best things they can do is watch Spanish language TV, if you can find something that is geared to kids or families and not just soap operas with very little action. She said that way they pick it up the way children pick up their native language as they grow, by listening, watching what's happening, like immersion, I guess. Just a thought.

[Hetty Fauxvert]

I don't want to take up too much "comment" space here but your post made me think about it overnight! Just wanted to add that although I tell my littles about earthquakes and terrorists, I actually do some editing. The other morning I read a horrible story about some demented woman who drove off a bridge with her kids in the car. I think I looked pretty upset, since my scaredycat came running over to ask what I had read. I told him that I had read about a lady whose cat died. (We lost two elderly cats in the last year, so this is not news for him.) I was NOT going to tell my little fellow about a mother who killed her kids! So I guess I am editing the World for them on the fly.

[Tine]

I keep coming back to read more comments because this conversation is like a focus group that I didn't have to organize. (I'm a children's book editor.) A big *mwah* to everybody for such useful information! And to you, Julia, for asking such an interesting question.

Also: After reading parodie's comment above, I feel compelled to mention (in case you don't already know this) that there IS a circus school around here, and it's a damn fine one. It's called Circus Juventas, it's in St. Paul, and here is the website: http://www.circusjuventas.com/. Their shows (with the advanced students) are every bit as good as Cirque du Soleil (seriously...I was slack-jawed with awe) at about 1/5 the cost of admission. And they offer classes for kids as young as 3. Even if circus school is outside your comfort zone/budget/whatever, go see their summer show. You won't regret it. :)

[Tine]

P.S. I just discovered this summer's show at Circus Juventas is called "Grimm." Funny!

[carosgram]

The best thing about children is that they go through developmental stages which make things a lot easier for us parents. For most young children death is interesting and not very scary. They really don't have a good grasp of death. They look at roadkill and find it fascinating to see what is inside an animal. They are not grossed out. By the time they are 10, they are really grossed out. You can talk to a six to 8 year old about sex and they may be confused a little but it is fairly easy. By the time they are 12, they don't want to talk to parents about it. Yucky! Children of 18-20 can sign up for the military and figure that though some people die, it won't be them, By the time they are 40, they know better. So go ahead and read the gory parts. It will help them deal with the hard parts of life later on. My children loved looking at a book I had that showed a dinosaur eating another one. They loved it when they were very young, hated it when they were 8 and found it wonderfully realistic when they were 16. Just goes to show ya. Thinking of you and wishing you the best

[Crystal E]

I was raised with Chavo del Ocho and El Chapulin Colorado. That's going waaaaaaaaaaay back, two+ decades, but I remember it being kid friendly.

[Crystal]

Wow. Patrick has always reminded me much of John, but Edward is a bit like Michael. Drew is the male version of Caroline apparently, equal parts sunshine and seriously? I will never claim favorites, my kids all thrill my heart in different ways, but Drew tends to be unusually engaging...

Since we have been living on the west coast in blissful ignorance of the fact that wild Texas weather is in fact wild middle of the country weather, we were not exactly prepared for the... excitement, ahem, of Michigan spring (particularly tail end of La Nina or whatever weirdness this is spring). Since my husband works at home practically nonstop, our conversations are 5 minute blips between meetings and at the rare meals we spend together. So the kids hear about some of our worries. Can't be helped. We also have been jumpy as 9 tailed cats in rocking chair factories with the latest storms that sent the horse shed skidding and lightening and thunder at a couple of strikes per second. Once we get used to it, we're able to put the game face on. Our first serious wind storm in a new house of dubious structural integrity (to me, the inspector thought it fine, but he doesn't live here) we offed to the nearest hotel. So when one of the kids is scared of Fukushima or lightening or howling winds I can honestly say "what did Mom do when she was worried something bad might happen?". Because I am that big a nerd/worry wart/chicken little, they have vast confidence that if I am not panicking, there is no reason to panic.

Since I haven't browsed a library book with the kids in something something mumble mumble years, I can't speak to the issue. I probably would not knowingly have picked up such a book, but having unknowingly procured it, I might have read as written, and handled it as I do the storms. And then I would proceed to read every happy, sunny, silly book I could find for a few weeks, kind of like eating salad to offset a rich dessert. Can't say the way you handled it is wrong either, likely I'm just not creative enough to have thought of such a solution. Your twinks are younger than I would prefer them to know of such things, but it's not like you're letting them play with a loaded gun. Doctored up story or not, they'll survive, and they'll learn a little something about enduring unpleasantness, and frankly, it's a good skill to master sometime in one's youth.

Enjoy the festivities....

[MsCellania]

Get Caroline Berlitz Spanish -- let her learn enough to be useful on a trip to Mexico. I hear the Fairmont in Quintana Roo is wonderful. http://www.fairmont.com/mayakoba/HotelPackages/Signature/UltimateBeachsideEscape.htm

[Michelle]

Sorry if someone else mentioned this but on youtube you can watch Pocoyo en espanole (sp?) it's a really cute animation and my son and I watch them in French, German, Spanish and English. just for kicks. The twinkles might really like it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24j-1W2lqSM&feature=relmfu

[Leah]

My son's still too little for scary books. But someone gave us this book that was very cleverly constructed to look like a sandwich and I had to get rid of it because the story was so obnoxious. You, the reader, were supposed to revel in the fact that a little brother was putting worms, bugs, snails, etc. on his big sister's sandwich, and this was OK because she was fat or greedy or something, even though if I remember correctly, she offered to share. I thought it was horribly mean-spirited.

[Rachel]

Every adult I know was read uncensored versions of classic fairy tales as small children...none are worse the wear for it..no one thought twice about it, but kids were much less sheltered and, as a result, more resilient way back in the 70's

[Kelli]

We read the kid stuff that deals with death and violence in a very "Lion King", circle-of-life kind of thing. I agree that it eases them in to think about the scary stuff when they're still too young to grasp it, so it's not so overwhelming and terrifying when they finally do understand.

I think the first thing we stumbled across was a Bambi book, in which Bambi's mom 'couldn't be with him anymore.' My rather sensitive 3 year old wanted to know why, and I told him. He thought the hunters were bad guys. In fact for a while, he thought everyone with a gun was a bad guy. But we didn't want him to be afraid of police or the military (we live 5 miles from an Air Force base and we see people in fatigues at the grocery store and my school concerts). I explained that the hunters weren't bad, but they were feeding their families. Just like police and military need guns to stop the bad guys. He said, 'but we don't eat deer, do we,' and I said that yes, in fact, we do. It tastes good, just like the chicken and beef and pork we eat. I went on to explain the whole plant, little animal, big animal, worm food connection and that while it's OK to eat meat (IMHO, let's not have THAT discussion here), it's very important to take only what you need and not be wasteful so we respect that it is a life that we are taking. He got it. It doesn't keep him up nights b/c humans are typically not prey. My parents were both raised on farms and farm kids tend to get a lot of the real world - where your food comes from, where babies come from, etc., so I haven't felt the need to edit truth from him.

I'm much more worried about kids who are only exposed to imaginary violence - as a teacher I see a lot of kids who don't understand that the violent things they act out have mirrors in the real world and that when real people get shot, they don't come back next time you rewind the film or start a new game.

We talk regularly about death being a part of life. We've lost two of my grandparents in the time he's been alive and he's gone to both of their funerals. We also happen to be Christian so we can talk about how, while we miss them, they're really happy in Heaven and how mucy we'll all enjoy seeing each other again when we get there. He knows he's got an older sibling there, too and he's excited to meet them some day, a LONG, LONG time from now.

I do avoid gratuitous violence - violence for violence sake. Little Red Riding Hood and the three pigs are OK because they're imaginary and he knows some animals are not nice, and wolves are one of them. But grown up shows, Batman, Spiderman movies, the crime scene dramas my husband likes that are so violent? No way. Even a lot of animated shows that are aimed at older kids have a lot of friend to friend violence and those are not allowed.

My son was actually considerably more upset by The Lorax, where all the trees were wiped out, habitats destroyed, and animals displaced solely out of greed and wastefulness. Hey kept asking why, why, why would they do that. Great teaching moment about the responsibility of mankind to look out not just for their own interests, but to protect the vulnerable around them.

[Chris in NY]

Skip the gruesome stuff at age 3 (and actually for many years after). As for a movie for the little uns- once of my daughter's favorites is only available in VHS. It is called the Children of Noisy Village. It is a Swedish movie- and to adults it is a boring, time waster that you cannot understand why it is mesmerizing to kids. And yet it is. (One of my daughter's biggest disillusionments was going back and watch this beloved movie as a preteen. She was aghast that it was so boring- but remembered LOVING it back in the day.) So that is my recommendation- a movie that is probably unavailable, you probably can't play on the equipment you have, and that you will hate to watch. You're welcome. ;)

[Christina]

I waffle back and forth on how much to protect my three-year-old. He asks a lot of questions about dead relatives and how/why people died, and I try to answer them as reassuringly yet honestly as possible. Mostly with fairytales I tell them to him without the book and the wolf just runs away at the end chastened and vowing to reform in both Red Ridinghood (he does eat grandma, but she emerges unscathed and the wolf is wounded but not dead after his woodsman-administered surgery) and the Three Little Pigs. I did change the fate of the unlucky suitors in the 12 Dancing Princesses from death to jail, more because I didn't want to get into a discussion of the misuse of power than because I was worried about him being scarred. He asks for the scary parts of movies specifically, so if I'm not comfortable with some part we fast forward the first time (like with the let's-hunt-the-beast lynch mob scene in Disney's Beauty and the Beast). He looooves Frank the Angry Combine in Cars.

My mother is all about expurgating. We have a book about the life of Buddha (not Buddhist, but it had nice pictures and was on sale at the book warehouse...) which isn't particularly graphic but does have a page with several sentences about how Siddartha meditated until he was super-scrawny and almost sick. My mother's version? "He meditated, and meditated."

[Christina]

PS have a delightful egg hunt!
PPS My son knows about the earthquake and tsunami thanks to a daycare friend's delaying a visit to family in Japan that was planned for a week after the earthquake, but not about the reactors or the deathtoll. He very sweetly keeps pretending to call 911 and say "Hello firemen? Can you go to Japan? There is a tsunami."

[Emily]

Sorry, don't have time to read all the comments, but I skip stuff all the time. I skip every reference to smoking, too. My husband doesn't, so sometimes the kids call me out on it if they've read the book with him. But I think it's fine. They'll discover what you've left out when their reading is better, and blame you, and then you can have a conversation.

[victoria]

Oy, you should see the "children's Haggadah" my mother handed me. It speaks of a vengeful deity indeed. SO glad I reviewed it privately.

[Courtney]

I am all for skipping over the scary parts. When my 3 year old and I watch Finding Nemo, we skip the first part where the mommy gets eaten. I let her watch Monsters Inc because I love that movie (absolutey no idea what I was thinking though), we had Monster issues for weeks. So I told her that our kitty cat loves to eat monsters. Now we joke that she need not worry because no monster would dare to step foot in our house because of the dreaded Phoebe Cat. We don't have any books that I need to skip over, thankfully. The way I look at it we are protecting our children from undo harm. If a jet races overhead you would shield your toddler's ears wouldn't you? I think skipping over the things that would cause them nightmares is the same thing. Also I LOVE that Caroline doesn't sleep in her bed. My 3 year old doesn't either. She started sleeping in her closet and now she uses a sleeping bag on the floor right in front of the door. Most mornings I find her with her little baby head on the hardwood floor and her pillow on top of her head. She is such a nut and she and Caroline are SO much alike that if we ever got together for a playdate you and I would would both need some Celexa.