When I was growing up, the 6 o’clock news was an evening fixture in our house. Dinner would finish and my Mum & Dad would retire to the living room to watch it. I grew up in Belfast and while I’m lucky enough to have missed the worst part of The Troubles, I was a regular witness to riot vans, burning hijacked vehicles and soldiers on my street. It’s pretty hard to shelter a kid when the town they live in is at the tail end of a long war.
However, I find myself a parent now and personally, I am, to say the least… Uncomfortable… With Ethan watching the news. Much like my own parent’s household, my in-laws like to watch the news. And Ethan likes to watch it with them. I’ll be honest and say that it only really dawned on me that he was absorbing the information one day when we were walking through a local wood. There had recently been a tragic accident where a little girl was killed by falling logs.
On our nice casual walk, Ethan turned to me and said: “Mummy, I won’t go near the logs or I’ll get crushed and be dead”.
Needless to say, hearing my three-year-old son talk about a concept that I had no idea he was aware of was quite confronting. I then asked my in-laws to kindly not watch the news with Ethan in the room.
Gavin and I actively choose not to watch the news. We aren’t ignorant, we get our world and local news from other sources. I just find a TV screen with 98% chaos and negative messaging too much to take in. I’m the kind of person that cries at adverts and watching the news often leaves me stewing over the state of the world for the rest of the evening. I get too invested in it.
Knowing that this is my own reaction, I feel like I should steer Ethan clear too.
I suppose you could argue that he could become too sheltered. But I try to combat this by giving him full and honest (but age appropriate) explanations to any questions he asks. Recently we’ve had questions like “what is war?”, “why do we eat meat?” and “are guns for killing people?”. Parenting really is heavy techno at times.
I guess what I’d love is a discussion, because I have a feeling there are going to be different views on this one.
Do you let your kids watch the news?
Do you shelter them from it?
Have you just never thought about it?
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This is such a personal choice!
As a teacher of secondary age children I am a real stickler for wanting my students to be ‘world citizens’. To understand where they live, be free to ask questions and develop/challenge opinions (usually in the presence of someone who thinks differently to them).
However, as the parent of a 5 month old, I am wondering when I would want them to start being aware of the news!
Like you, parents watching the headlines was a staple of growing up and my dad’s insistence that channel 4 was the best news always intrigued me.
I think, Newsround is a good place to start.
They deliver current topics with explanations of technical or political terms and offer further information online and support for how to process difficult stories. I often use it during tutor time and even some of my older students who have had a fundamental misconception about a topic have found these pages useful.
I like this idea of being ‘world citizens’. Your comment has definitely got me thinking about Ethan’s teenage years a bit differently. How can he decide his place in the world if he’s not informed about what’s going on in it I suppose? I guess it’s a matter of timing, but like you said Charlie, when’s the right time?!
E is just three (literally) and yes, we watch the news. She knows that some people aren’t kind and she asks where countries are on the map. It’s (aside from countdown which she also loves) the only adult programme we have on when the kids are awake and I believe it helps with vocabulary and a better understanding of the world.
We do tend to have it on only for 20 or so minutes in the morning but that’s long enough for her to comment at pre-school ‘Your hair is as silly as Donald Trump’ when they were playing hairdressers. The teachers found it hilarious.
I guess it’s, like me in my childhood, a sense of normalcy for E. The Donald Trump comment is hilarious. My son recently asked me “Who is Donald Trump?”, the only answer I could muster was “A scary clown on TV.” I think I surprised myself with how accurate my description was! 😂
This is the link I mean, though for children who are probably at least key stage 2 xx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/13865002
I put Newsround on in my classroom everyday after break. It’s light and creates amazing discussions. The children look forward to watching it.
Am I right in saying that Newsround is like an age appropriate edit of the news for younger people?
Absolutely correct. I used to work on it and the journalists give huge thought in how to make the news accessible to children and to explain things in a child friendly way. They also include lots of child friendly stories that you may not see on the main news eg dinosaur stories etc etc. They do cover things like terrorist attacks but in a simple way. For example this article. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/40149168
Basically I wish it was still on bbc1 as it’s a great intro to the news for children!!!
Yes you’re spot on really. It has more animal stories than the real news though. It mostly covers stories that involve other children. It doesn’t really focus on the depressing aspects of the news. However, it covered the Paris shootings very well. They interviewed children in a local school about their feelings on the situation. It doesn’t show anything about guns/murder/suicide but still manages to cover those types of stories. There’s a weekly roundup and an interactive quiz. Parents have commented on how great it is and that their children are always talking about it. This was especially true when Tim Peak was getting ready to go into space. The children loved the build up
I stopped watching the mainstream news over a year ago, my life is better for it. I’m an empath and I found what I was viewing affected me deeply. I keep my little ones well away from the news channel, when there older they can watch the news on cbbc if they choose to, but I keep them abreast of current affairs myself, and use it as a tool to educate. Like the adverse weather going on worldwide at the moment, lots of educational YouTube videos have been shown about weather systems etc and they’ve learnt about the devastation it causes because we donated to the Dominican crisis (my sons friend at school was directly affected by it).
While they’re still so little and become worried easily I cherry pick what they need to know and just keep the TV Off x
Jen, this is so interesting because I’m in a similar camp. But, do you ever wonder if being your kids only source of news is the right thing either? I sometimes thing that Ethan could end up with an equally biased view from just listening to me. It’s so hard because I don’t know of any unbiased news sources to rely on!
I don’t let them watch anything bad news related at all, I keep them in a bubble of innocence as much and possible at this stage as they’re too young to be able to process it. So when they’re older and can rationalise better they can form their own opinions on the world, but I’m very aware of how manipulated we are by the media, mainstream media especially – so I teach my little ones what they need to know at this point. TV is rarely on in my house anyway, now they’re both at school and have busy lives there’s little time for tv. Let kids be kids they don’t need to know about killer clowns or terrorism when they are so young x
My husband and I don’t tend to watch the news as we usually watch catch up TV and hardly see ‘live’ TV. If there is something terrible in the news such as terrorism I think it is sensible to shelter small children a little bit as so many awful details are given and repeated in short segments, but for everyday world news I think it is helpful to encourage questions (and hope you can answer them!).
There will be always be unfortunate accidents and although I wouldn’t want children to worry, I think coming up to school age it is a healthy way of introducing children to the fact that sometimes sad things can happen.
Interesting topic and so interesting to read what other parents do. We used to loosely watch news with my parents and I don’t ever remember being scared or worried by it. We can overthink absolutely everything as parents. I was watching Front Row last week and Meg Rosuff made a really good point about children taking out from stories what they understand about the world which really rings true for me. Take traditional fairytales – Anna loves Hansel and Gretel and isn’t even remotely bothered by their mother having died or the witch wanting to eat the children. It is strange to hear a three year old talking about death but it’s strange to us grown ups not the littles, they can be very matter of factly about it and it’s not a terrible thing that Ethan isn’t going to climb on stacked up logs. I am not going to be sitting Anna down to watch the news but I am not avoiding her seeing them either and hope she takes interest in what is going on in the world as she grows older.
My children have four parents: us, 6 Music and Radio 4. We listen to a lot of radio which is quite good as you can discuss the stories without seeing distressing images. And there are lovely bits and pieces like today there was In Our Time on feathered dinosaurs.
I well remember watching 9/11 unfold on the TV but that’s one of the first news things I remember watching rather than knowing about or listening to. The TV News was always just boring to me as a child, and 6 o’clock meant Simpsons for us!
I agree with Kat- I don’t think it is wrong for children to have serious discussions at a young age. We had to discuss what death and dying is as we met a squashed bunny on a walk this time last year- S still refers to dead like the bunny so it made a big impression. Also, archaeologist mother = unbothered by skeletal remains child, so far anyway.