Kalendraf
Explorer
BryonD said:Certainly at a young age this is correct.
But my 6 year old has a clear sense of what it means to inflict harm and why it is bad.
Being fascinated with pretend violence does not lead to a lack of understanding in the wrongness, as should be clear to most anyone on a D&D website, right?
Again, my 6 year old loves to pretend to attack me with her plastic sword or whatever. (or play D&D for that matter) But she understands the difference.
And I agree that the rate of understanding is different for every child and that some anti-social types seem to never catch on. So I would never claim that violence can be simply disregarded as an issue.
Good points. Thinking back to my own views on violence (which is really the only evidence I can expertly cite), I would say there are different stages of understanding. There's the kid-view of violence I had which is that it's bad because it hurts people. As I got older, say early teens, I started to understand that it's bad not just because it hurts one person, but other people as well (family, friends, etc). When I was a young adult, the full horror of what violence can breed finally sank in. I'm sure the ages for this vary depending on many factors (losing loved ones, etc).
When I was growing up, my parents kept me from seeing the really violent stuff, and I think that was very good parenting on their part. And I wasn't exposed to any ultra-violent games either, mostly because they didn't exist. For me there's a huge different in seeing games like Blood Rayne or just about any FPS that seem to glorify the carnage vs. the relatively tame stuff I grew up playing like Pac-Man. Maybe this violence doesn't lead todays kids to be more violent, but I'm sure it desensitizes them to how bad violence really is. D&D was probably one of the most violent games I ever played. It has desensitized me to certain forms of violence, and thus the concept of killing monsters or killing the bad guys seems acceptable. I'll let the psychologists among us judge whether or not that's a good thing.
BryonD said:
I too am of the opinion that children should not be exposed to sexually explicit material. I think near puberty is about the right time to start having some frank discussions about this topic. Given the accessibiity of porn on the internet, the topic may even need to be touched upon earlier. Personally, I'd be far less worried about my kids seeing a few naked bodies on the net compared to some of the information carried on hate sites.
In the case of nudity, I think we Americans have created a viscious circle. We try to hide anything with nudity from our kids, sending a message that it is wrong/bad/evil/whatever. We also do the same thing with sex, though in that case, it is something that is best kept away from them until they can properly understand it. However, since both topics are handled so similarly, nudity becomes forever intermixed with the subject of sex. I know that when I grew up, this was my line of thinking, and I suspect other kids then and now arrive at a similar viewpoint. The problem is that later in life, we tend to equate nudity with sex, which is bad for a number of reasons. I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that a number of the sexual-devient behaviors especially ones like voyeurism are a direct result of this mental linking of nudity with sex.
I'm not sure of the solution, but dividing the topic nudity from the topic of sex seems like the logical starting point. Handling them differently as a parent is the key.
