I both agree and disagree with muldoonthief. Why on earth would it have been so hard to print a blurb on the back cover like:
Letting parents decide if they’re ready to tackle a conversation with their kids that might ensue is perfectly reasonable. I don’t think anyone here seriously thinks learning that homosexuals exist is going to damage a 4 year old, but it might make the *parent *uncomfortable, that I’ll buy.
OTOH, I think four is certainly old enough to gently and non-confrontationally introduce the idea that not every family looks like ours. This isn’t about sex so much as about family. If she’s in preschool, she already knows that some families are mommy and daddy and kids and some are grandma and kids and some are mommy and mommy and kids.
And, I might add, it might not have elicited questions about sex at all. In my experience, kids want a lot of basic questions answered before they even get around to sex. “Where do babies come from?” is a gradual series of answers, not a lecture. When they’re three it’s “They grow inside their mommies before they’re born.” When they’re five it’s, “Mommies and daddies make babies together when they love each other very much.” By seven they want some mechanics, by 12 they (IMHO) should know how to put on a condom and by 14 they should be hearing about the emotional implications of sex and practical realities of pregnancy and by 16 learning about rape avoidance and reporting.
I was waiting and waiting for WhyKid to ask about sex, and one day when he was about 5, I picked him up at my mom’s to find him watching a nature show with mating sea turtles. OK, I figured, this is it! And indeed: “Mom, do you know what “mate” is?” he asked. I drew a breath, ready to start “the talk”, until he continued: "It’s like “friend! “G’day, mate” means, “Hi, friend!” Hey, look at this pencil Grandma got me!” And that was it. He didn’t actually ask about sex for another two years.
Because a king and a queen are at the heart of it, a man and a woman. A prince and a princess are a man and a woman. That’s what the kids are used to. All their friends have a mom and a dad.
I won’t deny that their are kids that could handle this at her age. Hell, I won’t even deny that my own upbringing and indoctrination are in play here. (12 years of Catholic school, didn’t even know what homosexual meant until I was in my teens, and there certainly wasn’t a positive, tolerant take on the explanation). But even if it’s more of a big deal for me than it is for her - that’s still my call to make.
To be perfectly honest - if the summary on the back dustcover of the book, which I did read before checking it out of the library, had said anything about it being 2 male penguins, I wouldn’t have batted an eye or posted here. But I think the fact that it didn’t is disingenuous, and led to me having to have to make a snap decision as to what to do. I won’t defend my decision further here, but I damn well would have appreciated not being forced into that decision with 2 seconds to think about it.
On preview - I think WhyNot just hit my point about the stealth mode of the book’s theme.
I agree with Whynot that their should be a blurb. When my mom ran a daycare center she put In The Midnight Kitchen on a special shelf due to nudity. Some parents have problems with penises in Maurice Sendak books or gay penguins. It’s best to let everybody know ahead of time.
Really? NONE of them are divorced, step-familied or have other relatives living with them? There are NO gay parents in your community?
If this is true, then we inhabit two totally different worlds, and my advice on child rearing is probably no more applicable to your kids than to hunter gatherers in Zimbabwe.
Sorry, but what with the recent elections, we’ve got a big backorder to fill, and we haven’t been able to get around to you yet. We can have some come by around five this Saturday to compare you to the Nazis, though. Will that work for you?
Seriously, like DocCathode, it’s not that I think you’re a bad person for not wanting to talk about this with your daughter. It’s just that your position honestly makes no sense to me. I guess you don’t have any close friends or family members who are gay? What if you’re out with your daughter, and she sees two guys holding hands? The whole, “My daughter isn’t ready to learn about that” thing seems so bizarre to me, because it doesn’t seem like something you could control in the first place. Gays are everywhere, we’re not all in hiding any more, we’re a part of the same world your daughter lives in. How do you expect to prevent her from learning about gays until you’re ready to talk about it? And, of course, why would you want to in the first place? I can’t imagine a negative outcome, but I can think of lots and lots of reasons to talk to your kids about it while they’re young, before they get to much exposure to all the institutionalized biases against homosexuals in this culture and start picking them up themselves. And if it turns out your daughter is gay herself, then you really can’t over-exagerate how much good it would do her to already know what that means and to be okay with the concept from a young age.
Sorry, I don’t usually try to tell other people how to raise their kids, but you did offer your experience up to the boards, and I’ve never really understood the position you’re professing here.
I’ll chime in that a blurb would have been a good idea. Not just to steer parents who get irrational about this sort of thing away, but also to attract parents who are looking for a children’s book about just this kind of subject. Of course, then you’d have some parents complaining that its forcing the subject matter onto kids who haven’t even picked up the book. :rolleyes:
No single parents like Triton in Little Mermaid or whatzisface in Aladdin? How did you deal with those questions?
Nobody’s questioning that.
Why do you say defend? I didn’t mean to give the sense that I’m attacking your position. I’m genuinely trying to understand it. Even if I wanted to attack you, I’d have to have a clear understanding of your position first. I’m not playing stupid as some Socratean ploy or to trap you. I honestly don’t understand.
Thinking about it - I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure that all the kids my 4 year old hangs out with have a female and male parent living with them. They have one friend whose older brother has a different father due to a previous marriage and divorce, but that’s completely off the 4 year old’s radar - the 6 year old has asked about it, and we’ve talked about it with her however. There may be some kids in preschool with divorced parents, but since she doesn’t see them outside of school much it hasn’t come up.
She’s 4 though - it’s not like she’s a social butterfly with hundreds of contacts. She hangs out with the neighborhood kids (10-12), kids in preschool (15), and her cousins (3). I don’t think it’s that big a stretch that there are no gay parents in that circle. I have to admit that the no single parents is a little unusual however - I honestly don’t know how that fell out.
And I live in a suburb 15 miles north of Boston - I don’t think we’re that close to Zimbabwean hunter gatherers.
DocCathode - my kids are aware of death. My mother died 2 years ago and we’ve had that talk with them. It’s funny you brought up Little Mermaid - my oldest on her very own figured out that Ariel’s mom must have shuffled off this mortal coil.
Nazis? Is that the best you can do? I was hoping for something a little more imaginative and specific to the topic. I’ve been called a Nazi enough times (see my previous post re: conservative in Massachusetts) that it doesn’t even register anymore. Phelps now - I’d appreciate a good Phelps comparison.
I’m glad you’ve been able to maintain your own marriage, then. If they ever legalize homo marriage here in Pennsylvania, I’m sure my wife and I will succumb to the corrosive effects it has on hetero marriages.
But I’ll probably be nailing dogs by that time anyway, even if we don’t have PRick Santorum looking out for us anymore. Hell, my dog already has a head start - he nails anything that moves. My poor 11 year old boy is just the right size.
Do you think that the dog humping my son will turn my son gay? :eek:
Be reasonable. You’re asking Debaser to do something completely unprecedented for him; it’s on the order of a major lifestyle change. He might need intensive therapy even to start down the path.
So how about a book like A Baby Sister for Francis? After all, it’s damn hard to touch upon the subject of a new baby without discussing sexuality, short of going back to either the stork-dropped-one-down-the-chimney or the -found-under-a-cabbage-leaf theories… :rolleyes:
Kimstu, it seems to me that we are separated from the other animals only be the complexity of the feelings we experience, not their kind. It’s all just chemicals in the brain. Calling the instinctive attraction penguins have for one another “love” is no more vain than applying the same label to our own instincts. Besides, my brain chemicals are telling me it’s cute. Awwwwwww.
What I don’t get is, muldoonthief, for heaven’s sake, it’s so easy. I get that you’re worried about how you’d deal with the issue, and that it makes you uneasy for it to come up. But like kimstu said, gay people are not this subject that you have to be a certain age in order to deal with. As was said, you can deal with it in an age appropriate way at any age.
Just like you tell a little kid who asks about pregnancy, “You grew inside Mommy and when it was time, you came out and were born,” when they ask about gay people, just say, “sometimes two men or two women fall in love just like Mommy and Daddy are in love.” Answer complete, problem solved, you go back to watching Spongebob.
I think a lot of times because of the way that homosexuality is portrayed or discussed, we think of it as this big complex topic that a lot of adults can’t even deal with - which is true as far as that goes, but I think we underestimate little kids and (more importantly) overestimate the complexity of the problem. If a kid understands “boy falls in love with girl” (and if they watch Disney, they do, in an age-appropriate way), they understand “girl falls in love with girl”. It’s not scandalous, it’s not sexy, it’s not complex. Why get excited?
(Now, for the onslaught of the Uppity Board Queers, that wasn’t so painful, was it?)
