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I think kids should be encouraged to watch the news as soon as they show an actual interest in it. It should be accompanied by discussion, and any topics that come with a "warning - the scenes you are about to see..." disclaimer is your opportunity to either change the channel, or send them to another room until the scenes are over. Or you could turn the TV off and discuss with them the topic that you didn't let them see, so that they would at least be aware of the topic itself.
However old that is, is up to your kids. Discussion should be age-appropriate but other than that I see no reason to "forbid" kids from watching the news.
My younger daughter started wanting to watch the news when she was 3. She would actually tell me when it was time to turn on the TV, if I hadn't already. She's 8 now and reads the news daily on her tablet, and wants to discuss interesting stories with us. My older daughter hasn't been as interested in the news as her sister, but I tell her about things I think are important.
Kids should be exposed to the news to learn what not to do, at a very early age
The stuff they see outside is more a risk than what's on TV
And there's very little that will hurt them by watching the news and a lot more that will help them
They will learn how to construct sentences
They will ponder what words mean
They will learn some geography They will learn guys go to jail when they do bad things
They will understand what a weather forecast looks like
They won't be affected one way or the other by stock index reports so can't hurt them
I use print news and some spoken reports on TV to teach my children how NOT TO SPEAK. I'm appalled at the incorrect word usage and poor sentence structure we see and hear today.
Except if they are on Wall Street or work for big banks where they get multi million dollar bonuses
I'm a big believer of watching and discussing the news with my children. The actual news. Not the Today Show or Fox and Friends. I turn it off if they are playing 911 calls or showing chemical warfare attacks on children in Syria. But we discuss the news every single day in our family, my 1st grader can find Crimea on a world map. My 3rd grader understands the difference between the House and the Senate. We also get a newspaper that the kids are free to read every morning.
One of the things that bothered me the most when I moved to the US was the lack of current event knowledge. I grew up in a house where politics and current events were argued over the dinner table and the newspaper was passed around the breakfast table. I am neither paranoid or anxious, in fact I think the more kids know about the world the less they fear it and the more they know how great we have it.
Eta I do agree with hypercore's point above. Being educated about the news does not involve 24hr coverage of Sandy Hook, a random kidnapping, or mass shootings. That stuff I don't watch and I don't expose my kids to ...big difference.
What do you mean lack of current event knowledge in the US? Most people I hang out with are relatively well informed.
My kids were 9 and 12 when JonBenet Ramsey was killed a few miles away. They got so upset watching that stuff on TV, that I made them turn the TV off. Ditto Columbine. They were 11 and just 15 at that time. Same thing. Now we probably got more Columbine news than anyone else, for weeks. But still.
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Originally Posted by Aggiebuttercup
In 6th grade our social studies teacher asked us to cut out political cartoons once a week and write a paragraph about what it meant. I started watching the news with my parents so I could understand the cartoons. By 8th grade I was reading the paper cover-to-cover...and 25 years later I still love my daily paper.
My oldest is in 2nd grade. We discuss some big events with her. She overhears us discussing others among ourselves. I have started turning the local news on when the kids are home at least one day a week. They don't usually listen, but occasionally we'll start talking about what we see.
Again, my oldest was in first grade when the first Gulf War started. Some dingo from Boulder wrote a letter to the editor, stating she took her then six year old to a protest. She said the child literally freaked out. I thought, what did she expect? Six year olds aren't ready for this stuff, with angry mobs (which happened at this particular protest.)
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Originally Posted by Hedgehog_Mom
My younger daughter started wanting to watch the news when she was 3. She would actually tell me when it was time to turn on the TV, if I hadn't already. She's 8 now and reads the news daily on her tablet, and wants to discuss interesting stories with us. My older daughter hasn't been as interested in the news as her sister, but I tell her about things I think are important.
When my older daughter was 8, she watched the VP debates, Dan Quayle and Al Gore. As they began arguing, she got very upset and left the room.
Now my kids aren't wusses, and they didn't grow up to live under a bridge, as many on the parenting forums have suggested they will (not knowing, I guess, that they're already grown). Nor were they "overly sensitive" as kids. They were kids, period!
Now local news is often "Bear in a tree" type stories, plus a lot of sob stories on particularly slow days. It's not particularly informative, but it's not usually scary (unless it's JonBenet or Columbine).
Quote:
Originally Posted by no kudzu
I use print news and some spoken reports on TV to teach my children how NOT TO SPEAK. I'm appalled at the incorrect word usage and poor sentence structure we see and hear today.
Except if they are on Wall Street or work for big banks where they get multi million dollar bonuses
Exactly! We watched the local FOX news the other night, and their grammar was horrible!
I don't either. However, when 9/11 occurred, the two younger ones were in 1st and 2nd grade, and they were frightened by the coverage. We lived in NJ, and knew people who died. We didn't turn off the tv, but we didn't expect the kids to sit and watch the non-stop coverage either.
I don't even watch the news anymore. It's either obviously biased, or the newscasters are awful. We live in GA now, and the anchors stumble over words on a regular basis. It drives me crazy. If anything major happens in the world, I'll tune in to Brian Williams, who can still cover the top stories with eloquence and no political slant.
To keep up with the news, I subscribe to The Week. It prints stories from other news sources around the world, and gives varying views equal coverage. Since my own kids are older, they get their news from the internet, not the tv.
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