all this is so subjective. not all children are like that. and that is the part we have to acknowledge. my dd is far more upset that her father and i don't get along, that a group of boys are bullying her best friend. anything else is so not that important. it is us as parents who have to decide what is best for our children. not others telling us how we should be bringing up our children (not saying that that is what you are doing). i recall asking my mom so many questions about things i heard. and she would keep telling me i was too young. so i would try and find out from others. and i'd get all convoluted answers.
my dd is the kind for whom 'too early' is so ideal for her. if she hears about violence that's bad. but if she develops an interest in shakespeare oh that's great. *shrug* the radio is such a better medium to hear that than watching on tv. dd heard the word sexy from a song when she was 3. she knew it was not a term society approved of young people knowing so she first asked her 5 year friend and then came to me. i could have told her just like my mom but that would have made her seek the answer elsewhere.
at 3 was my dd listening to blood and gore? no she wasn't. she found NPR boring at that age and always asked to change that station till she was 5.
some children need to know. by 5 i could not 'shelter' my super curious child anymore coz she was getting exposed to stuff from elsewhere - like the news paper from passing the kiosk or even from the library, or passerby's discussion or the tv news from the store we had stopped at or the restaurant we were eating at. i'd rather she hear stuff around me and have me there to answer questions than elsewhere.
worse than news or NPR were books. dd didn't 'know' about monsters or worry about them till she 'discovered' them when her dc/ps read where the wild things are when she was 2. the pictures frightened her. other toddlers introduced her to other 'scary stuff' like a disease that kills you, machines that kill you. so really news is so not the only source children get info. some kids are oblivious to it. dd's bf's family also had NPR going in the kitchen all the time. he totally didn't pay any attention to it like dd did.
so i feel there is no one easy answer. one size fits all doesn't work either.
in our life - did my dd need to know? yes she did coz i was involved in activities around the stuff she 'shouldn't' hear. coz her friend in K lost his dad in the Iraq war and he wrote about his dad any chance he got in class. coz in first grade a friends parents were splitting up and it was going terribly with knives and the police involved and he was changing as a student and friend. coz another friend had to move in with her gma so they moved far away which reduced the number of play-dates we could have. all of this in first grade. she had to understand why her bf's family was so into stranger danger. why her bf refused to talk to strangers and even look at them. her brother had been kidnapped from her mothers arms for a v. short while thankfully.
I agree that we parents need to decide what is best for our children. Simplicity Parenting spoke to me because I already had those parenting philosophies. It was nice to read a comprehensive and detailed explanation for these parenting philosophies, as this is an uncommon way to raise children. My husband and I do not know anyone else IRL who limits media the way we do. When my son starts asking questions about sensitive subjects, I will answer them honestly and to the best of my ability and in an age appropriate way that is specific to my son's sensitivities. I don't see the need to expose a young child to news when people we know and meet in our daily lives have issues that we need to explain to our children. i.e. we go to the grocery store and my son asks why someone is using a cane, an electronic cart, has a cast on their leg, has tattoos, why the ambulance is in a hurry, etc. The heavy stuff will come, but I prefer to allow my son to be a child for as long as possible (he is only 2). My mother did watch the news and listen to NPR, so I was exposed to a lot stuff that really did bother me at a young age. But, it didn't help that I had a very rough childhood. I know my own experience is determining how much media I will allow for my child during his young childhood years. I did, however, start reading the newspaper when I was 9 and was obsessed with going to library starting at age 10 to read encyclopedias front to back as well as other reference books. I do remember having an appetite for information about the world. Eight is kind of young in my opinion for the scary news stories on NPR, but other non-violent news and programs would be fine to me at that age. We filter our son's reading at this time, but I love books and research and plan to share all of that with him. Yes, other people, our kids friends will expose our child to things that we may find inappropriate, but we don't always have control over those moments, where as we do have control over the radio. I think we underrate children's attentiveness to what they hear on the radio. Just because a child does not react or ask about what they hear does not mean that they are not paying attention. They still may not be able to shut it out of their minds.
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