How honest should we be with kids? By honesty, I mean topics like death, adoption, sexuality and sex. I believe in this day and age we hide our kids from the truth as what really is going on.
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How honest should we be with kids? By honesty, I mean topics like death, adoption, sexuality and sex. I believe in this day and age we hide our kids from the truth as what really is going on.
And what about the whole Santa Claus thing??? Parents are all liars.
I believe it all depends on how mature your kid is. If they are 7 but mature for their age then maybe you can be honest about some things. But some kids just aren't ready to handle the truth.
I'm still a child myself(14 is, right? I'd like to believe so)
Well once they become more independent, tell them. They'll come back running to you, and become tenacious again.
Maturity is a big factor.
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Parents are notorious for being liars. When they're kids we say "You can be anything you want to be!" but as soon as they're teenagers and want to be a rock star they say "Well now be realistic honey." for srs
But honestly, I don't know and don't really care. Not planning on popping out any babies at any point in time. I'm good with it just being me and my woman. More fun that way.
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My mom told me a little about the whole sex thing when i was younger but didn't explain the details. I learned about it more during health at school. I like the approach she took. It was enough to educate me a little about the subject without it getting too weird. At that age, I probably wouldn't of understood the details anyway.
To make this short, I believe nobody should lie. We do, but generally, we shouldn't. Why shelter your children? It's only going to hurt them in the end. I asked where babies came from when I was five. My mom told me the entire truth, but I totally didn't get it. Then, I asked again when I was eight, and understood from there on. Am I harmed in any way? No. I asked why one of the kids in my second grade class told me I would burn in hell because I didn't believe Jesus. She told me because some people aren't as open to diversity. I asked why my godfathers lived together, my mom said because they're married (back in the day when you could get married in California). Am I corrupt? No. It's not like she made me watch porn or anything, she just told me the truth, because everyone has the right to know the truth.
The only thing my mom protected me from was horror and gore. And quite frankly, I'm happy. I can just imagine the nightmares I would have :/.
Last edited by Akihiko Yamamoto Hozagaki; 08-16-2009 at 11:49 PM.
深く根ざした||傷は消えない
Hide it, Hide it, Hide me
*points to post above*
that`s pretty much the same for me.
Except 2 things.
1. I watched and loved horror films. XD
2. I was adopted.
I was told that I was adopted from when I was very little. My parents told me all they could in a way that I could understand. They even made a small book for me with pictures. It made perfect sense, and didn`t seem odd to me, at all.
They are my family, now and forever more.
Kids aren`t as stupid as parent believe, at times. They can handle things.
My mom told me all about drugs. Sat me down and made me watch tons of documentaries on people on drugs, or who were alchoholics. It didn`t scare me, but I have no desire to be like that, so, I will not do drugs or drink. I`m still young, but I can refuse. My parents showed me how to say no, and I know how to speak back whether it be sarcastically or not.
I was still sheltered, in a way, though. Even though I saw and heard about the things, I grew up without them around me. Maybe that changed me, but I don`t think so. I know more than people around me think I do, but I`m still considered the "innocent" one. I`m fine with it. (although, that`s probably more because I don`t even swear)
Either way, it`s life. Face it when you`re young! *shrugs*
My parents are too busy to talk about all the mature stuff.
I have older brothers that are more open.
They're my second parents, I guess.
Sometimes, they're too specific about things...
Secret Technique.
I like our system, just let them find out from other kid's at school.
Its no use hiding it from kids, most of them have curious minds and if you don't tell them about these things they are going to find out about it through other unreliable sources, and odds are the might try and experience these things for themselves because they found out from the wrong people
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I'd say you should be 100% true because then your kids will get on them internets and learn all about it there and think your just a lair or really stupid
and that is no good :\
Does that mean relationships are delicious like pie?
I'm loveing it!
I just tell the kids they have AIDS
Tell them the truth if they ask. Sheltering kids does them more harm than telling them the truth ever would, since if they don't get the information from you, they get it from 4chan.
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The way I see it, kids should be told they want to hear according to their age. So that way, you could tell a 7 year kid a fabricated truth about child birth or any other topics that interests them and hence fulfill their desire of what they want to hear fitting to their age. Typical kids would learn step-by-step as they grow up, from school, from friends and from even their parents, in a progressive manner.
The point of the fabricated truth is to diverse their attention from such mature subjects in order for them to focus more on their studies, play and other forms of interaction without giving much conscience to mature subjects. Why? Cause they can't handle the truth at an early age. Morever, they don't know how to react properly with that truth at an early age. Just let them be happy. And in a cheerful environment, the better you learn. As they shall grow, so shall their learning capacity and their enthusiasm to know more, and so, they shall learn the truth when their time is right. Besides, it's always amusing to hear, share and tell whimsical stories like The Stork, and is also a best excuse to avoid situations that could make you squirm.
Last edited by CrystalAce; 08-17-2009 at 06:12 AM.
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You summed up what I was going to say rather nicely.
You shouldn't hide the truth anyway because kids will have their answers. I wasn't told the truth when I was 7 and I went to the internet for answers because I KNEW that stork story was bull. Let me tell you, what they would have told me would have been better than seeing what I saw.
The horror...
Last edited by Señor Nobody; 08-17-2009 at 06:19 AM.
I now know what hell sounds like; I recommend a tactical nuclear strike on my position. Tell my family I love them.
Oh, but you don't understand. Those parents who hide their precious little darlings from the world and refuse to accept the fact that they will have to grow up one day don't want to change their views. Instead, they're secretly compiling the list of celebrities and entities to blame when they turn out wrong.
Last edited by 3pleT; 08-17-2009 at 08:30 AM.
Lex Luger R.I.P
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Death and adoption I think you can pretty much come right out and say what happened while still being age appropriate. Especially with adoption, a really good way I heard to explain that one to tell your kid that they're special because you chose them, while other parents had no choice in what kind of child they had. This is also really good a good come back for kids to use if they get picked on for getting adopted.
When I was in elementary school, I was aware that the sperm fertilizes the egg, but for some reason I didn't know and didn't really question where the two came from. I'm not really quite sure how I would deal with this with my kids, but, I do think it's possible to give a short explanation that's age appropriate.
I think lying to kids is stupid. You can half truth it (for example, not going into the physical mechanics of sex as an answer to "where do babies come from" with a six year old) but not straight-up lie. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think honest questions should be answered with factual information whenever goddamn possible. Curiosity should be rewarded.
Ehhh, I dunno if I'll stick around. We'll see.
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I suppose in the interest of the future generation, I would tell kids the truth as accurately as I possibly could (i.e. verbatim from a dictionary). Personally, I do not think that there is any merit in deciding what my children should or should not know. The methods of their understanding are probably obscured from mine to a degree such that I would be unable to know if keeping the truth would do harm or good for them. If that is true, then I would rather bet on free information than on obscurity and lies.
A man chooses.
A slave obeys.
The information age has been quite a double-edged sword, because it doesn't discriminate who gets what information and often people don't have a choice in the matter. Given my educational background, as well as personal experience working with kids in the K-12 ages, I'm shocked at how much our kids "experience" through media. They are inundated with sexuality and violence from the days they are old enough to start absorbing information. An interesting correlation is that children are becoming sexually active at younger and younger ages; the average age of a child to have sex for the first time is (in the United States) in middle school. It wasn't so many years ago that I was in middle school and oral sex was considered disgusting and got the participants made fun of.
Wanna see something fun? Watch Middle School Confessions. If you're in your 20s or older, it'll probably disturb you.
Contrary to what some might believe, children have limits on what they can comprehend. The finality of death simply cannot be understood by the vast majority of children, even in cultures where death is celebrated and not feared, until they are nearing adolescence. Even high-school-aged teenagers have trouble comprehending the consequences of sex, or sexual activities not involving intercourse. Depending on the age of adoption, adoption is something young children cannot understand.
In psychology, I have the pleasure of viewing the consequences of information saturation at too young an age; anyone wanna hazard a guess at where self-medication, to speak nothing of eating disorders and certain conduct disorders (not Conduct Disorder, specifically, but the generic "disorders involving poor conduct") come from? It's my opinion, for whatever it's worth, that in today's age the biggest challenge of most Western nations has been and ought to be to regulating the flow of information to children.
Bad Memory
Last edited by Forgotten Show; 08-17-2009 at 09:15 PM.
Umm, so what you're saying is that the oppressive Victorian/50's blocking of any and all knowledge of sexuality and the wall of ignorance it threw up between people and their own mortality is dissolving? And your opinion is that's a bad thing? Frankly, I'm glad that the age people have sex has steadily declined back to what it is in the rest of the world for all recorded history and at the same time not resulting in a huge number of teen pregnancy in comparison.
Sex can very easily be fun and risk free with only a small amount of caution, but children aren't a great thing to have ASAP. People by and large are willing to acknowledge the risks, which is why our teen pregnacy rate and STD rate is pretty low compared to the undeveloped world and human history ignoring the US in the 50's.
Which is not to say they couldn't be better, but I don't think MORE ignorance is the best way to get there. Japan has one of, if not the lowest STD and Teen Pregnacy rates in the world and it's because they having dancing condoms as mascots, and not because sex is something they find out about in college word-of-mouth from a dorm mate.
Protip: Never bring up psychology as an argument, all I have to do is wait three years and every thing you've mentioned will be found either flat out wrong or inconclusive. The therapeutic side has some merit, but the theoretical side is nearly always bunk made up to satisfy any given psychologist's hobby horse. For example, if self medication is a side effect of the information age, why are addiction rates much lower then they were during the "Patent Medicine" craze at the turn of the 19th century? Or do they conceder that part of the information age too?In psychology, I have the pleasure of viewing the consequences of information saturation at too young an age; anyone wanna hazard a guess at where self-medication, to speak nothing of eating disorders and certain conduct disorders (not Conduct Disorder, specifically, but the generic "disorders involving poor conduct) come from? It's my opinion, for whatever it's worth, that in today's age the biggest challenge of most Western nations has been and ought to be to slow the flow of information.
Bad Memory
Last edited by Manhattan_Project_2000; 08-17-2009 at 09:45 PM.
Ehhh, I dunno if I'll stick around. We'll see.
The List of Hate, My self-indulgent journal-thing.
Last Post: Video Vomit 05/11/11
I think there's a way to provide the information in an appropriate way. I don't remember what, exactly, my parents told me when I asked such questions, but I know it had nothing to do with magic and storks.
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