Should children be shielded from morbid subjects?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m second guessing myself a bit and wanted to check in.

I’ve got a six year old boy, brilliant, autistic, never stops wanting to learn about stuff. From a young age I’ve taken the approach of radical honesty with him. He asks me a question, I answer it factually. He asks lots of questions.

This has led to some difficult conversations as he seems to be fascinated with darker subjects. Our conversations tend to be all over the place (I think because we both have ADHD) but to give a sampling, last night we jumped around on the following topics:

  1. Diabetes
  2. HIPAA and medical privacy
  3. Mental illness including my schizophrenic uncle (I was trying to explain both what his father does for a living and why medical privacy is important.)
  4. HIV/AIDS, since he asked if any illnesses were illnesses for life. I have talked to him about sex so I did mention it’s most commonly sexually transmitted (only because he seemed slightly anxious he might get it) and that we are very low risk, but I didn’t go into which groups are higher risk and why. But we talked about how medical treatment has changed from the 90s until now, how it used to have a 100% mortality rate, but now if people have access to the proper treatment they can live long lives. We also talked about global disparities in access to medical care.
  5. On the subject of improving medicine, little kids used to die all the time from illness and now, because of vaccines and better sanitation, they don’t.
  6. Presidents who have been assassinated and how such assassinations can be prevented.
  7. This led to guns. I told him we live in a country with a lot of guns yet the statistical odds of being shot are low, however kids accidentally shooting themselves is a major problem. I told him there will never be any guns in this house. If he ever sees a gun, do not touch it and get an adult immediately. He seemed to understand this was an important safety rule.

He started asking me about getting shot in various parts of the body and what’s lethal vs not, at which point I decided to wrap up the conversation. It was a bit much.

As an aside, I’m not sure where the gun questions are coming from. I asked him if there was any discussion at school (like an active shooter drill) and he said no. I’ve never seen him watch any YouTube content related to guns, in fact we explicitly forbid it, at any rate he’s not watching YouTube anymore (separate decision.)

It’s hard for me to know if he really understands death - at least he’s never lost a loved one, but he’s told me he’s going to be really sad when his parents die, and he’s worried about being alone when that happens. Yet when we talk about mass casualties he seems more fascinated than appalled. I don’t think he’s quite connecting mass destruction with his own anxieties about his parents’ future death.

I asked him if he was feeling anxious about any of this stuff and he said no.

I told him to tell me if he has any nightmares or starts worrying about bad stuff happening to him. He said okay.

I understand some people are just morbidly fascinated by death and dying. After all, true crime is a booming enterprise. Sometimes I can be a bit morbid myself. So there’s not anything inherently wrong with being attracted to darker subject matter. I just wonder if there’s any chance of psychologically scarring him by indulging his natural curiosity at this young of an age.

He’s not generally an anxious kid.

I think one of the perhaps more realistic fears is that he starts talking about stuff like this with other kids and not really grasping whether or not it’s appropriate. Currently he doesn’t talk to other kids much, and we’ve not had an issue with this. But as my husband pointed out, “We can only rely on that for so long.” Since he is autistic he has a higher chance of saying something inappropriate than the average kid.

(Humorous anecdote to illustrate this point, a while back he asked me about people eating other people. He asked me if it ever happened, I said yes, it’s called cannibalism, but it’s so rare that the people who have done it are famous for doing it, at which point he announced, “I want to be famous for eating people!”)

I just wondered for those of you who have experience with young children, where do you draw the line with this sort of thing?

2

Well, he’s going to get his questions answered one way or the other. If you don’t answer them, someone else will, and you don’t know what kind of answers he is going to get. Were I you, I’d continue doing what you are doing.

3

No lines. My kids always got an explanation, no matter the subject, even if I had to somewhat simplify it to make it more understandable.

4

This would be my answer too.

5

And this one as well.

6

If he is bringing up the subject, it’s perfectly fine (and laudable) to answer his questions, at the level that he can understand.

What is likely inappropriate is seeking out extreme things in which to expose him. But you aren’t doing that.

7

It’s been the policy of several of my friends that if their kid was old enough to ask a question they were old enough to get an honest answer. It’s a policy I general adhere to when speaking with children.

I used to work in a museum where I’d play docent to school kids typically ranged ages 10 to 18. One of the exhibits I’d show them was our amputation kit from the Civil War where I would speak about injuries and diseases rampant during the conflict. While I wasn’t overly graphic with younger groups, I did speak with them about people getting sick, injured, and dying.

Children should not be shielded from morbid subjects. If they have questions about why grandpa is gone they deserve an honest answer and a safe environment to process that information. My sneaking suspicion is that shielding kids is less an effort to protect them and more about protecting us from uncomfortable conversations or truths.

8

In general, I’d say there should be little if any limit about the verbal speaking of morbid subjects. You need your kid to be fully aware of the dangers of the world, with no sugar-coating. Any sort of lying or withholding truth will also sow big seeds of distrust between you and kid.

However, go easy on the visual stuff. My mother would show us videos of blood gushing out from the wounds of shark-attack victims when I was 6 or 7 (maybe to teach us the dangers of sharks?) and it was highly upsetting to me to watch.

9

Growing up, I remember we used to lose 2-3 kids a year to shark attacks on our way to or from school. The 80s were rough.

10

Well the good news is I can’t handle that stuff, so I’ll not be showing it to him.

Though I was wondering if I should talk to him about 9/11, so maybe not include footage?

11

I think the footage is so ubiquitous about that particular event, 9/11, that there’s no real point hiding it from him. But even then, it can just be the plane impacts but not any zoomed-in photos of corpses, etc.

12

Children should not be shielded from anything. They will learn the cold, hard truths anyway. Who do you want them to learn the answers from? Better to tell them the truth instead of pretty little lies that they will learn later are bullshit. You are raising a human being. The first thing that they will learn if you ‘sheild’ them is that you are a liar and not to be trusted.

13

This is really where the reality disconnect is with him. I predict he’d be excited to see a building fall down, without really grasping the impact. And I don’t know if that should influence whether or not I show it to him.

To be honest I don’t think even I have watched that footage since that day. It will likely be upsetting for me, at least. But my reaction might have an impact on him too (in a good way.)

14

Errrr, ok, that’s hard. Maybe you can tell him about 9/11 but in a way that maximizes the pain of it but minimizes any sort of kinetic excitement (otherwise he may latch on to the fiery explosions with enthusiasm because it’s spectacle.) Go as somber on the tone as possible. Maybe you can tell him but point out that “3,000 people died, and they were people who were loved a lot by those around them, like if you lost your (close friend), but imagine losing thousands of them. America used to be quite happy and carefree before that day, but ever since then people have been less happy.” Minimize anything that could be considered “cool” to him, which, unfortunately, a jetliner hitting a tower at 500mph may seem cool.

15

I agree. If anything, they often are more accepting of those kinds of things, if they’re posed in a way that’s not scary or threatening.

For example, when my kids asked about 9/11, I explained that it was a terrorist attack, some basics of what happened that day, and what the outcome was, including the death toll and the collective shock and anger.

But I didn’t go into any of the graphic or horrifying stuff about people jumping, calling from floors above the fire, or any of that stuff. There’s no point in terrifying them.

16

I’ve got an idea. There are plenty of survivor videos that tell personal stories of what happened to them. I can keep it personal and less sensational. Like this actually happened to a person.

17

Yup, that might do it. All the facts and personal impact but minimizing the spectacle of it.

18

To add to what bump said, I also think some parents (not the OP, but other parents) over-estimate the extent to which they are actually shielding their kids from getting violent stuff into their heads. The parents can refuse to talk about morbid things but the classmates, neighbor kids, all kinds of other sources of information may discuss all kinds of violent or disease or dangerous things with enthusiasm - possibly highly inaccurately. And a parent who tries to clam up and not discuss anything bad, is missing out on a chance to correct misconceptions and clarify things - which can be worse off for the child, who may be letting urban legends grow in his mind unchecked, such as thinking that if a tarantula bites you you’ll drop dead in minutes. Kids hear all kinds of wild things when little, and it’s important for parents to be able to have frank discussions so they can debunk myths.

19

I’m gonna try not to get preachy. As a very young girl I had a supposed trusted Adult show me photos. (I’m not gonna share their nature, out on the board…I’ll be happy to tell anyone privately. Just PM).

They scared me, confused me. Did not have words to explain to my Daddy what it was. It was bad, folks.

My Daddy finally understood and removed me from that situation.

But…this 6 weeks or so of this happening messed up most of my adult life. I still, this many years later dream of these pictures. They still scare me.

I didn’t utter one word for about 5 years after this.

Yes. Children should be shielded and protected. There are things a parent can do to minimize exposure.

I was the most helicopter Mom you can be and my kids were still up on current things their peers were talking about. They will hear things, see things and do risky behaviors.

I say curate what they see and hear WHILE you can. That power goes away blazingly quickly.

Only you can decide what is too much for your son, Spice. I think you’re doing just the right things.

If he says inappropriate things to you, you can bet he’s saying it to others. You need to find a way to make him understand he can’t say that out in public. And there will be times when he embarrasses you or himself. That can be a learning moment. You can point back to it and remind him how embarrassed he was about it.

Or if he says something at school that gives the teacher pause, remind him he had time out for that. So the lesson will stick.

Be very careful not to teach him to omit or lie to you about it. Tell him he can always say anything he is curious about to you. Give him advice where/who it’s appropriate talk about it.

You’re doing fine with the Wee one. I sense you’re a good, careful parent.

Again, I think you’re doing just the right things.

20

I did talk to him about 9/11, shared some pre-screened videos and we talked about it. He was very respectful. He said he hopes all the people that survived have healed by now.

I tried to show him that cool boatlift video and he couldn’t deal with the guy’s super thick New York accent.

Then he forgot about it, and I think one of the things about having kids these days is the dissonance of how you experienced that day and the fact that to them it’s just another day in history.