sockgirl77
Well-Known Member
My kids only watch Sprout, Noggin, and Nick Jr. :shrug:Roughidle said:Yeah...they get enough of those on the Cartoon Network.
At what age ...
- Thread starter crabcake
- Start date
Nickel
curiouser and curiouser
Be careful with that. My mom had good intentions, when I was about DQ's age, when she started telling me about a case in Edenton, NC, a few towns over from where we lived. Basically a group of day care workers were accused of molesting the children in their charge for a period of time, and the parents found out by chance after it had been happening for awhile...the workers were telling the children that their parents wouldn't love them anymore, or wouldn't believe them, and they were wicked children, etc etc...basically scared them into keeping quiet (it later was decided that the investigators planted ideas in the kids' heads and it never happened, but who knows about that). Every day for what seemed like months, my mom would tell me about this, or other stories, to ensure that I had my wits about me and knew the difference between what was okay and what wasn't. I think this is the reason I'm so standoffish and get weirded out easily. I wouldn't go as far as to say I'm paranoid (I'm not scared to be home alone or anything), but I am sometimes very nervous in new places and around new people if I don't have a "life line". I suppose her tactic worked, because I was never molested, kidnapped, or murdered, and as an adult I am much more aware of my surroundings at any given time than the average person, but at what cost? Anyways, the moral of this story is to approach it delicately and not scare the crap out of the poor little girl.crabcake said:Of course, there's that part of me that says "Let them be little and enjoy the innocence" ... but I'd rather DQ be aware and live smarter/safer as she gets older than naive and charbroiled.
crabcake
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Thanks for the ideas/suggestions/background/info. 
It's a far different world today than when many of us grew up, and I can't help but feel that children today need to be made aware of certain things at an earlier age than perhaps we did as kids because of the changing environment. I already talk with her about the dangers of talking to strangers, providing too much information about our home/belongings to non-close friends/family, and thinking about her actions before following through with them ... but I feel as though she might need to see/hear it in action to understand that the threat is real ... there are sick people who want to hurt kids out there; people do break into homes and steal things, liberals really do have twisted ideas of what is right, etc.
Okay, the last one was a joke.
It's a far different world today than when many of us grew up, and I can't help but feel that children today need to be made aware of certain things at an earlier age than perhaps we did as kids because of the changing environment. I already talk with her about the dangers of talking to strangers, providing too much information about our home/belongings to non-close friends/family, and thinking about her actions before following through with them ... but I feel as though she might need to see/hear it in action to understand that the threat is real ... there are sick people who want to hurt kids out there; people do break into homes and steal things, liberals really do have twisted ideas of what is right, etc.
Okay, the last one was a joke.
Christy
b*tch rocket
crabcake said:Do (did) you start having/making your children watch the news, if at all? I read that article about that sick bastage who grilled his girlfriend in Texas, and it got me thinking, how else will our kids know about the level of sick freaks there are in the world (cuz let's face it, they don't believe us, just like we didn't believe our parents, and so on) ... so I'm wondering at what age would you find it appropriate to basically force kids to start watching the news and to discuss the things seen/heard in hopes it'll awaken them to the reality we live in today?
Of course, there's that part of me that says "Let them be little and enjoy the innocence" ... but I'd rather DQ be aware and live smarter/safer as she gets older than naive and charbroiled.
Mine's been watching the news since she was a baby. I've never tried to protect her from seeing what sickos are out there. :shrug: It's always brought up good conversations, and I think it's helped her be more attuned to what is realistic and what is not, if that makes any sense?
seanboy79
WHAT'S MY NAME??
hey you !!!! how u doin? 
crabcake said:Thanks for the ideas/suggestions/background/info.
It's a far different world today than when many of us grew up, and I can't help but feel that children today need to be made aware of certain things at an earlier age than perhaps we did as kids because of the changing environment. I already talk with her about the dangers of talking to strangers, providing too much information about our home/belongings to non-close friends/family, and thinking about her actions before following through with them ... but I feel as though she might need to see/hear it in action to understand that the threat is real ... there are sick people who want to hurt kids out there; people do break into homes and steal things, liberals really do have twisted ideas of what is right, etc.
Okay, the last one was a joke.
Christy
b*tch rocket
crabcake said:Thanks for the ideas/suggestions/background/info.
It's a far different world today than when many of us grew up, and I can't help but feel that children today need to be made aware of certain things at an earlier age than perhaps we did as kids because of the changing environment. I already talk with her about the dangers of talking to strangers, providing too much information about our home/belongings to non-close friends/family, and thinking about her actions before following through with them ... but I feel as though she might need to see/hear it in action to understand that the threat is real ... there are sick people who want to hurt kids out there; people do break into homes and steal things, liberals really do have twisted ideas of what is right, etc.
Okay, the last one was a joke.
You know, I really don't think the world is all that different today than it was when we were growing up, you just have more publicity, more outlets in order to get the news out there.
seanboy79
WHAT'S MY NAME??
you mean our parents kept in the dark more? i do think times are diffrent from we were kids...but i think times were diffrent for our parents as well.. our parents went threw a whole other time then us...so our kids are going threw a diffrent time then us....just how the world works..but it is getting smaller (info wise)
Christy said:
I think if the kid is interested, go ahead and engage them in conversation. Give them a history lesson, tell them how stuff works.
But I definitely wouldn't expose them to some of the uglier things freaks out there do - a simple warning that freaks exist is good enough. No sense in scarring the kid for life by triggering their vivid imagination.
But I definitely wouldn't expose them to some of the uglier things freaks out there do - a simple warning that freaks exist is good enough. No sense in scarring the kid for life by triggering their vivid imagination.
Christy
b*tch rocket
seanboy79 said:
No, they didn't keep us in the dark more, you just rarely heard news outside of your own community news viewing area. You never heard some kid was abducted and killed in Florida if you were living 5 states away. You heard about what was happening in your area, know what I mean?
crabcake
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vraiblonde said:
Dare I say it? ... I worry that DQ (for her age) lacks common sense sometimes. Case in point, just 20 minutes ago, she was on her friend's front porch waiting for her to come back outside. I'd told her it was tormenting her friend to take the A&W root beer over there, but not take one the friend. From the front porch, across the street, she yells back "Oh yea, Mom, I'm not really tormenting her about the soda cuz she doesn't like them."
So, as crazy as it sounds, I almost feel like she needs to hear/see the reality of the crazy bastages out there for herself to know that they really do exist ... that the threat is real. She's aware that kids get kidnapped, but I don't think the reality of never seeing mommy/daddy, or what people do to kids they kidnap is understood. And that's WHY when I say, "Don't open the door" I mean it!
Does that make sense?
crabcake said:
Oh pooh - she's just a little kid. She's not going to suddenly have the sense of a 30 year just because you tell her things.
Case in point:
We were watching some show on TV where a cop is showing a woman just how easy it would be to get her teenage daughter to open the door to a stranger. Mom says, oh no! That would never happen because we warn Sally all the time about opening the door to strangers while we're not there!
Oooookaaaaaayyyyy, sez the cop.
Cop knocks on the door, kid answers.
"Hi, can I use your phone? I have a delivery for the people across the street and they don't seem to be home."
"Sure, come on in..." (As Mom has a heart attack)
"Say, does your dog bite?"
"Oh no, he's friendly but here, let me put him in the basement so he doesn't bother you." (Mom is practically sobbing at this point)
Cop finally tells the girl what's going on, Mom comes rushing in having a mega-fit, girl feels like an ass.
Now, Larry and I watched this show with our middle daughter who was around 13 at the time. We discussed it!!! We talked about what the girl did wrong and what she SHOULD have done!!!
Not a month later, I'm at work and I get a call from the youngest:
"Um, are we supposed to have a praiser here?"
"What do you mean?"
"There's a guy here and he says he's a praiser - Alex let him in the house."
"Stay right there - I'll be home in 2 minutes!!"
Turns out he was a real appraiser and was at the wrong house - he was supposed to be across the street. I said, "Alex!!! We JUST talked about this!!!! Why did you let a stranger in the house????"
And she said, "Because I didn't want to seem rude..."
So the moral of the story is you can talk until you're blue in the face, scare the hell out of them so they can't sleep at night, and guess what? It won't do you any good.
But the good news is that it's highly unlikely that your child will be the victim of a predator - it just really doesn't happen that often. We were all stupid, and the vast majority of us grew to adulthood.
:shrug:
crabcake
But wait, there's more...
vraiblonde said:
Oh pooh - she's just a little kid. She's not going to suddenly have the sense of a 30 year just because you tell her things.
Case in point:
(all that stuff you typed)
I saw that show, too ... and that would be DQ.
I see Christy's point too ... we see/hear a lot more about it than we did in earlier years because of the media. Ya'll know how it is as a parent nowadays ... you hear all this ugliness going on, typically followed by some liberal group wanting to rehabilitate the child molester who just claimed his 5th victim, and you think about every possible scenario that you can run through to protect your kids. It's mind-boggling!
Nickel
curiouser and curiouser
I distinctly remember staying home from school one day (I was sick)...I was 10 or 11. I heard a loud noise on the front porch, ran into the kitchen, hid and called my mother. She had to come home to find that our storm door had become unlatched and was slamming against the house when the wind blew.vraiblonde said:
I would have never opened the door to a stranger. Hell, I still won't answer the door if I don't know who it is, unless Dustin is home. So, Crabby, maybe you should just scare the crap out of DQ, it obviously worked for me. 
Cowgirl
Well-Known Member
Nickel said:I distinctly remember staying home from school one day (I was sick)...I was 10 or 11. I heard a loud noise on the front porch, ran into the kitchen, hid and called my mother. She had to come home to find that our storm door had become unlatched and was slamming against the house when the wind blew.
Once, my sister and I got home from school and saw a strange car in our driveway. We lived down a long dirt road surrounded by woods....if a car was there it wasn't just 'the wrong house.' We quickly walked back to our neighbor's house and called my dad. He flew home and searched the car and found out it belonged to my mom's friend. She came over, then my she and my mom took mom's car shopping. Better to be safe than sorry though!
crabcake
But wait, there's more...
Cowgirl said:
I'd like to ... but honeychild ain't knowin' no fear!
