Veronica Deleon-sutter

But what about innapropriate images, language etc. for an 8 year old? My
daughter likes to go on youtube and jump from video to video following her
favorite characters (mario for example), and she likes to read the comments
which aren't always rated g or even pg, and some people post videos in cartoon
format that aren't meant for young kids, but that's not why I'm writing;
tonight when I tried to step in and get her to move on to something more
innocuous  her reaction was like that of a child, that I fear if I don't get
unschooling right all is going to be lost by the time she is a teen. She was
reactionary and mean and demanding. I very calmly tried to explain why I wanted
her to move on  to some other video, and she would barely listen. My heart is
reeling from this exchange, I want to do my job as a parent by keeping her safe
online.

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Jenny Cyphers

***her reaction was like that of a child, that I fear if I don't get 
unschooling right all is going to be lost by the time she is a teen. ***


She is a child.

*** She was reactionary and mean and demanding.***


Perhaps she felt that you were being reactionary and mean and demanding?

I understand the uncomfortable feeling of seeing your young child exposed to something more mature than you think is good for them.  My youngest is exposed to stuff way beyond her age on a regular basis.  It's not that I go out of my way to do that, she lives with a much older sister who has a lot of friends over.  She has seen and played very mature video games.  She has, on occasion, seen rated R movies.  What I can say, is that she will walk away from whatever makes her uncomfortable.  Not everything mature causes her discomfort the way it causes me discomfort knowing that she is exposed to something that is what I feel, beyond her age.

I can't hide her from her sister and maintain a happy cohesive family and as much as her sister tries to keep things little kid friendly for her, it just isn't always that way.  I'd say that if your daughter wasn't uncomfortable watching whatever she was watching, then maybe let it go, or talk about it to gauge her comfort level.

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Sandra Dodd

-=- but that's not why I'm writing;
tonight when I tried to step in and get her to move on to something more
innocuous her reaction was like that of a child-=-

She's eight years old, right? She IS a child.

-=- I fear if I don't get unschooling right all is going to be lost by the time she is a teen. -=-

Pam wrote:
"As we get older and our kids grow up, we eventually come to realize that all the big things in our lives are really the direct result of how we've handled all the little things."�Pam Sorooshian, June 4, 2007

"All is lost" is extreme.
All can be worse, or better, depending what you do now.

An understanding of why is more important that a list of what.

-=-I want to do my job as a parent by keeping her safe online.-=-

Do you want to "do your job" or do you want to be your child's parent? Those might not be the same thing.

Watching rude Mario videos doesn't put her in danger.

-=- She was reactionary and mean and demanding. I very calmly tried to explain why I wanted
her to move on to some other video, and she would barely listen.-=-

If a baby is holding a knife, and if you want her to put it down, the best thing is to remain calm and offer something more colorful, prettier. If you grab and pull and wrestle, you risk hurting yourself or the baby with the knife. If you make a better, more interesting offer, she'll just drop the knife and grab the new thing.

If you grab the video and try to wrest it away from her suddenly, it will make her yell, and make her want to see what was so interesting that it was worth hurting her about.

The hurt might be coming from your reaction, more than youtube.

http://sandradodd.com/onlinesafety
http://sandradodd.com/internet/

Sandra






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BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

<<<<But what about innapropriate images, language etc. for an 8 year old? My

daughter likes to go on youtube and jump from video to video following her
favorite characters (mario for example), and she likes to read the comments
which aren't always rated g or even pg, and some people post videos in cartoon
format that aren't meant for young kids, but that's not why I'm writing;
tonight when I tried to step in and get her to move on to something more
innocuous  her reaction was like that of a child, that I fear if I don't get
unschooling right all is going to be lost by the time she is a teen. She was
reactionary and mean and demanding. I very calmly tried to explain why I wanted
her to move on  to some other video, and she would barely listen. My heart is
reeling from this exchange, I want to do my job as a parent by keeping her safe
online.>>>>>

-=-=-=-=-
I am going to tell a story that is happening right now in my extended family.
My sister-in-law's oldest child, a wonderful girl that turned 18 this past winter and  just graduated from High School
has had a steady boyfriend for a couple years.
This girl is always doing everything right. She graduated honors in class, she runs and does track and competes and has competed in gymnastics for years making to national competition several times, she is aiming for a health care career as an MD or a Nurse Practitioner. She is beautiful and nice and never in trouble.
She has never rebelled or done drugs or done anything to upset her parents. She wants to please her mom and dad but specially her mom.
A couple years ago she started dating this boy in her class. The boy is a real nice young man. No into drugs, sweet to her, dedicated boyfriend, nice guy plainly putting. He does not have a nice family,, lots or trouble there with his dad ( who is not nice at all) and a mom who does not care, parents are not together.
My sister-in-law and  her husband have really worked hard and today they have a business and live very well with nice brand new cars and a brand new house, a big boat and lots of traveling. His family has no money and no one has a career. My sister =in=law has decided that this boy will not amount to anything in his life and she has been campaigning to get them to break up now that my niece is going to College a few hours way.  They used to like him and were really nice to him until now. So my niece finally told her parents that she broke up with him and she really did not = ,y


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BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

 Sorry my computer went hay wire!
So here it goes the end of the story"



<<<<  They used to like him and were really nice to him until now. So my niece finally told her parents that she broke up with him and she really did not.
She decided to just go behind her mom's back.
That is what can happen when a parent gets in between what a kid wants.
There will get to a point where even the "good" kids, the ones that do every thing to make their parents happy, will go behind the parents back.
The mother also thinks she is doing a good thing, making her daughter open to meet other boys that can maybe grow up to have a career where they may make lots of money. She  thinks she is doing a good deed for her daughter, she knows better, but what she is really doing is damaging her relationship with her daughter.
Even my 5 year old daughter is sad the boy did not come today to help my niece get her cows ready for the County Fair!


Alex Polikowsky

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BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

and to add to the point that Sandra made.

I rather my child shows me the rude Mario videos than hiding it from me.
We watch Family Guy together in our house and we also love Mario.
I know when my son finds something offensive to him he avoids it. He does not get sucked into watching stuff he does not like.
He also tells me about some rude stuff that are funny and he knows I will not censure what he sees.
He turned 9 less than a month ago.

He also trusts me to tell him if a movie has stuff he may not like or is afraid of. That comes from trusting me
to not get in between what he wants to see. I do not think it even crosses his mind that I would censure him.

 
Alex Polikowsky

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[email protected]

I thought I would add my story.

My son, who is 5.5, has been watching youtube minecraft videos. Gee, some of them really swear a lot. I am very sensitive to swear words and cannot stand them.

I stopped the videos and asked him to watch others. But, really, I couldn't predict which one would have those words.

I was at a loss and was really afraid of my son picking up those words.

I sent an email to Alex and she told me not to make big deal out of it.

So I continued to let my son watch those videos. If I heard those words, I would point it out those were swear words. Also I commented some players were really nice and polite.

I have never heard of my son saying any swear words, other than, what the hell, what the heck..

A couple of days ago, he started making his first you tube videos. He deliberately chose very nice and polite words! He said he wanted to be those nice and polite players!

My fear of my son dishing out all the swear words was unfounded. Instead of blocking, maybe I have given him freedom to make his own choice, in this case, words.

Jihong/joy

Joanna

> My fear of my son dishing out all the swear words was unfounded. Instead of blocking, maybe I have given him freedom to make his own choice, in this case, words.
>
> Jihong/joy
>
That's a great story, and mirrors what I have found to be true in our unschooling journey. Probably the biggest one was reopening the doors to media about 6 years ago. I'd read very scientific books about the detriment that would be caused to my daughter's imagination, but lo and behold, she had even more stories to fuel her and her imagination soared to new heights. <bwg>

And both of my kids (d12.5 and s16) have always been their own wisest censors. They are the experts about what they are ready for and when and have rarely misjudged as badly as I have at times.

Joanna

Jenny Cyphers

***That is what can happen when a parent gets in between what a kid wants.
There will get to a point where even the "good" kids, the ones that do every thing to make their parents happy, will go behind the parents back.***


I think kids that are "good" are more likely to be sneaky about doing naughty things.  They  have a reputation of being good to maintain!  It's probably why the preacher's kids are the most naughty!


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Schuyler

There are a lot of "innapropriate images" in the world. When Linnaea was 7 she
was standing on our driveway by a very busy road and a bunny was there. Linnaea
went to touch the bunny and it jumped into the road where it was hit by a truck.
That was a hard image for her. Her guilt was enormous. It helped to talk about
it with her. The bunny was moving slowly, was suffering from myxomatosis, was
possibly better off for having a very painful, ebola-like disease cut off by a
truck. Certainly any bunny that it would have come into contact with later on
was better off not having it in the world. It helped to let her deal with it, to
rationalise it in her own way, as well.


When Simon was 7 we were getting dvd's in the post from a netflix equivalent.
Screenselect, maybe. Anyhow, he loved when the mail came with a new dvd and he
would run and grab them and take them upstairs to the bedroom where the dvd
player was set up. Doing that, unfortunately, meant that he saw Shaun of the
Dead before he was prepared to. It freaked him out for a while. And when a
friend recently brought it over to watch he still didn't like it. We've talked
about it. He's concluded that he doesn't really like horror films, although he
quite likes fairly dark books.


That's without youtube. That's just with a world of things to see.

With youtube they have so much control over what they see. And with me being
around and not freaking out too much about anything, although sometimes I make
humorous (I hope) and loud comments about things that disturb me. Actually a lot
of what they've watched that may be outside of what I'm comfortable with has
sparked really cool discussions about things. But I haven't screened stuff for
them in a limiting way. I will tell them when I know there may be something that
they don't like in a video, but mostly I'm just finding out as I go along, like
they are.


Schuyler




________________________________
From: Veronica Deleon-sutter <vdeleonsutter@...>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, 22 July, 2011 1:50:33
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] mums and computers and...

But what about innapropriate images, language etc. for an 8 year old? My
daughter likes to go on youtube and jump from video to video following her
favorite characters (mario for example), and she likes to read the comments
which aren't always rated g or even pg, and some people post videos in cartoon
format that aren't meant for young kids, but that's not why I'm writing;
tonight when I tried to step in and get her to move on to something more
innocuous her reaction was like that of a child, that I fear if I don't get
unschooling right all is going to be lost by the time she is a teen. She was
reactionary and mean and demanding. I very calmly tried to explain why I wanted
her to move on to some other video, and she would barely listen. My heart is
reeling from this exchange, I want to do my job as a parent by keeping her safe
online.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Joyce Fetteroll

On Jul 21, 2011, at 8:50 PM, Veronica Deleon-sutter wrote:

> when I tried to step in and get her to move on to something more
> innocuous her reaction was like that of a child,

If you were intensely enjoying something and your husband wanted you
to do something else for reasons that made no sense to you, how would
you feel?

If he did that more than a couple of times, would you maintain your
cool or start to get really irritated?


> that I fear if I don't get
> unschooling right all is going to be lost by the time she is a teen.

What's confusing you is the term "unschooling." You can't get
"unschooling" right if you're following rules and not understanding
the why beneath it. Unschooling can look like letting them watch
whatever they come across. But what lies beneath that action is
helping them find what they love and avoid what they don't want to see.

And what do you mean "all"? What are you picturing life looking like
when she's a teen if you don't get unschooling "right"?


> She was
> reactionary and mean and demanding.

If that's what you define as the reactions of a child then it's a very
degrading view of children and a lot like in the other thread of
"real" children who are "Distractable, Impatient, Argumentative,
Unenthusiastic, Non-book-loving, Inattentive, Poky, Vague".

Children aren't "reactionary, mean and demanding." Having a limited
skills set, children can react strongly and in ways that adults would
label inappropriate when people are deliberately interfering with
something they're enjoying. Adults point at the child's reaction as
the problem. The real problem is the adult who is interfering and not
helping.

Be a partner rather than a roadblock and she'll not only not have
something to react "childishly" to but you'll build a better
relationship with her.


> I very calmly tried to explain why I wanted
> her to move on to some other video, and she would barely listen.

Several possibilities:

1) She's highly sensitive. Ross Greene's The Explosive Child will help
with ideas. (But the way you've written suggests this is unusual.
Though it can help anyway.)

2) You're pulling her away from things you don't want her to do more
than you realize. And her reaction wasn't to this one time thing but
to the steady build up of similar tugs from you.

3) She was hungry or tired or antsy from intense concentration and
your "help" -- your roadblock! -- was a last straw. Most parents would
take away what their child was doing because the reaction "proved" the
child wasn't able to handle it.

But it happens to adults all the time. And other adults -- adults with
any social sense -- will avoid them until they've worked off their
irritation, or do something nice for them that they feel might help
ease the irritation. And most adults have learned to pick up the clues
that they're getting antsy and have developed strategies to take
breaks or whatever. It's tempting to want to make her take a break but
there are much more relationship building ways to help someone grow in
awareness and explore options. (Ask here if you think this might be
the case.) The worse way is to insist you're right in your
observations and impose your way of fixing the problem.

> My heart is
> reeling from this exchange, I want to do my job as a parent by
> keeping her safe
> online.

But what you describe is a child who was sensitive and reacted
strongly. Are you saying the "unsafeness" of the internet has caused
her to be irritable?

I think you're making connections between things you don't like and
lumping them all together into a confusion that's muddling your
thinking.

Irritability can come from intense concentration on anything.

If she feels empowered, she doesn't need to read comments that will
upset her. If she feels her power will be taken away, she may want to
cram in as much as she can.

She may be seeing things *you* don't think a child should. But her own
internal like/don't like meter is a better judge than you are of what
she likes and doesn't like. She *will* push the limits of her meter,
exploring her own boundaries of what she likes and doesn't like and
why -- which keep changing as she's growing older so it's not a one
time thing but ongoing.

You can interfere with her growing understanding of what she likes and
doesn't like by implying that her meter doesn't work and yours is
better. This is where many many parents go wrong. They see their kids
making choices they wouldn't, they see their kids exploring their
boundaries and assume their kids judgment is faulty and the parents
need to take over. But to grow judgment kids need to explore it, not
have someone else's imposed on them. By the time they're teens, kids
have the power to stand up to parents' imposition but they lack the
experience with exploring their own judgement. And where their
judgement is saying their parents ideas are right, they become
reactionary and want to do the opposite.

If she's seeing things *she* doesn't want to see, you can explore with
her various filters. Help her find what *she* wants to see and avoid
what *she* doesn't want to see.

If you're curious about what she thinks about the crude comments, ask
her at some other time. And *listen* to what she says with an open
mind. Don't listen with an ear tuned to your ideas of what she should
be thinking or should not be thinking. Listen to *her* ideas. Don't
impose your "right" way of thinking on her. Don't lead her to your
"right" way of viewing the world. Listen to her growing understanding.
Trust that she's a thinking being and her ideas will change as she
gains experience with the world. Trust she'll value kindness if who
she is is treated with respect and kindness. Trust that she'll want to
step on your ideas if you show her that's what you do with people who
don't have the same ideas as you do.

Joyce

BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

Jihong share those videos with us. Just last night Gigi , my 5 year old, asked for the laptop in bed so she could watch Simon and Lewis ( the funny guys who do Minecraft videos and do swear but are very funny) She loves them. She even has a video singing about them I put on youtube. She also does not swear ...well once about a year ago she said it in a very funny way: " WTF!!" and everyone laughed . She never really repeated that. I do tell my kids that swear words can offend people and where it is not appropriate to use them and why.

 
Alex Polikowsky

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sheeboo2

---I rather my child shows me the rude Mario videos than hiding it from me.
We watch Family Guy together in our house and we also love Mario.
I know when my son finds something offensive to him he avoids it. He does not
get sucked into watching stuff he does not like.
He also tells me about some rude stuff that are funny and he knows I will not
censure what he sees.-----

Family Guy was a big one for me. Noor saw a few bits on YouTube, I think Star Wars parodies, and wanted to watch more. I remember watching the first few episodes with her and cringing at the thought of what other parents would think if they knew I let her watch it. It was especially difficult to think what my *own* parents would think--and we live with my dad and step-mom. She laughed SO hard watching it; she enjoyed it SO much, that I found the experience immensely pleasurable and was able to connect to how *I* felt sneaky letting her watch and how terrible that felt--to enjoy something that others would disapprove of.

What Michael and I have done with programs that have serious adult content is ask that Noor watch them with us, that way we know exactly what she's being exposed to and we can answer questions without having to grasp for the origin. It also helps us offer explanations that are simple and suitable for her level of understanding (instead of freaking out that she knows the word "Pervert," for example).

One of the most surprising benefits of watching things like "Family Guy" with Noor is that I have allayed many of the original fears I had about mainstream TV/Video/Film from my early years as an unschooler. I was trained (I use that word intentionally) as a feminist visual theorist, and that training fueled my early resistance to free media access to young children--I was afraid that all the "sexist, classist, racist narratives" would color her view of the world and of herself (mind, I was worried about all this when she was just 3!!).

Some very helpful mommas pointed out that my worries were unfounded, that I was taking studies based on schooled youth and my own experiences with schooled college students as the only possible outcome, but unschooling families have different experiences! Why? Because parents are *involved* in what their children watch/read/hear--they share the experience and thus share many meaningful conversations about all the topics that had me so worried.

Noor has a greater awareness about race, class, culture and gender issues than many college age students I've met. She is keenly aware of advertising techniques and manipulations.

From Family Guy Noor has also learned, among many other things, about Benjamin Disraeli, John Hancock (aka, John HandPenis--how can you Ever forget this signing member of the Dec. of Independence with that reference!?)), that, according to the bible, Jesus was given a sponge soaked with vinegar on the cross.....it has become a standing joke in our house, that when Noor spouts off some bit of knowledge that's hard to place where she knows it from-- like the other morning when she heard my dad say that he didn't sleep well because he had to get up umpteen times to pee, and she asked him if his prostate was okay--that the answer to "How do you know that," will be "Family Guy."

And all the above examples, plus many more, were gateways to deeper conversations, which translates to learning, meaningful and exciting and Natural learning because it came from genuine interest.

Brie

sheeboo2

---But what about innapropriate images, language etc. for an 8 year old?----

Something that we've done, as far as YouTube is concerned, is set the "safety mode" feature up for when we're not sitting with Noor. Here's a link explaining how to do that:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=126289

Most of the time, either Michael or I are in the room with Noor while she's surfing YouTube, but for times that we're both engaged in other things and Noor is concerned about scary images popping up, Safety Mode works pretty well.

I'm not concerned about language, though. Noor is 7, almost 8, and I have complete faith in her that she knows what, when and where certain words are acceptable or not. Hearing an " inappropriate" word isn't going to scar her. I'm not even sure that I believe there are inappropriate words--just inappropriate times for using certain words, and I think most 8 year olds are quite able at making these distinctions.

Brie

Joyce Fetteroll

On Jul 22, 2011, at 11:13 AM, sheeboo2 wrote:

> What Michael and I have done with programs that have serious adult
> content is ask that Noor watch them with us, that way we know
> exactly what she's being exposed to and we can answer questions
> without having to grasp for the origin.

This is a great illustration of the difference between being a partner
and being kids' protector.

A child who knows her parents will say no to what the parents believe
is harmful will likely internalize a suggestion to watch it together
as another way to control and monitor them.

A child who knows her parents motivation is to help, will likely
internalize a suggestion to watch it together as a way to help, so she
can have available the parents' greater understanding of the world in
an area that might be full of unexpected pitfalls.

Joyce

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-I'd read very scientific books about the detriment that would be caused to my daughter's imagination-=-

I question that there ARE any "very scientific books" about detriment to imagination.
I'm serious.
The arguments are spurious and contrived, and don't involve interested, interesting situations with thousands of choices.

Sandra




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

plaidpanties666

Veronica Deleon-sutter <vdeleonsutter@...> wrote:
>
> But what about innapropriate images, language etc. for an 8 year old?

It can help to think about what you mean by "innapropriate" - do you mean they scare her? Make her uncomfortable or unhappy? You can help her know how to avoid those.

>>she likes to read the comments
> which aren't always rated g or even pg

What's her reaction? Chances are, a lot of that is going right over her head. She might get the sense of whether a comment is positive or negative but not the details, that's normal for a kid who's prepubescent.

> tonight when I tried to step in and get her to move on to something more
> innocuous...

Why did you want her to move on? What - specifically what - are your fears? It might help to think about that, even write them down and look at the words and see if they make sense to you later. You don't have to post them if you don't want. You seem to be afraid of something, but its not really clear what - that she'll see something that gives her nightmares? something sexual that will... what? confuse her? set her up to ask you awkward questions?

>>I very calmly tried to explain why I wanted
> her to move on to some other video, and she would barely listen.

*I* don't understand why you wanted her to move on, so I suspect she didn't either. As far as she could tell, you were the one being unreasonable, demanding that she do something nonsensical - why should she listen? From her point of view, you weren't making sense. Try to see her perspective, where You were the irrational one and she was trying to tell you in the strongest way possible that your behavior was not acceptable to her.

> I want to do my job as a parent by keeping her safe
> online.

Kids are safe online when they feel like they have control over the situation. When they're able to switch to something else when they don't like what they see. When they're able to say "this person isn't playing by the rules" and report that person to an authority. When they're about to tell their parents "you wouldn't believe this jerk on the internet". To create that safety, be someone who your daughter trusts to help her explore the world, someone she can talk with, point things out to, complain to without "well, you shouldn't have watched that", someone she can ask "what are those people doing?" without you saying "OMG, turn it off!"

---Meredith

Sandra Dodd

-=-> I want to do my job as a parent by keeping her safe online.

Meredith responded:

-=-Kids are safe online when they feel like they have control over the situation. When they're able to switch to something else when they don't like what they see. When they're able to say "this person isn't playing by the rules" and report that person to an authority. When they're about to tell their parents "you wouldn't believe this jerk on the internet". To create that safety, be someone who your daughter trusts to help her explore the world, someone she can talk with, point things out to, complain to without "well, you shouldn't have watched that", someone she can ask "what are those people doing?" without you saying "OMG, turn it off!"-=-


Parents should consider arranging for their children to feel safe at home, with the parents. Safe from arbitrary flip-out. Safe from the need to be sneaky.

Sandra

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Joanna

Oh yeah! I was thinking "very scientific" in quotes when I wrote that, but forgot to put them in!


--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> -=-I'd read very scientific books about the detriment that would be caused to my daughter's imagination-=-
>
> I question that there ARE any "very scientific books" about detriment to imagination.
> I'm serious.
> The arguments are spurious and contrived, and don't involve interested, interesting situations with thousands of choices.
>
> Sandra
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>