So, one of the tricky parts of parenting academically advanced kids is that they're often light years ahead of their chronological age. For example, Jacob has the math reasoning abilities of an 11th grader and the reading level of an 11th/12th grader. It makes things tricky. Yes, we've been down this road before, but either I've blocked it out and moved on or, more likely, literature is just different now. At least the literature he's interested in.
He'd like to read The Hunger Games and I Am Number 4. I'm having a difficult time knowing what to do. I've never read either, honestly they're not my thing and I'd rather not read them, but it makes it difficult to evaluate the appropriateness of them. It'd be much easier to have him stick with books that are age appropriate, and he does read a fair amount of those (he's super-excited to get Diary of a Wimpy Kid tomorrow), but he craves higher reading level material with more in-depth story development.
Any advice? Familiarity? Opinions?
I'm fairly certain, from what I've seen on Common Sense Media that there's no sex to worry about, (he is 11!), but of course that's not all there is to be concerned about. I worry about the subject matter being too upsetting, I worry about the violence, though, he loves the 39 Clues and the Percy Jackson series and those have more than their share. I've never been big on censoring what our kids read, we've tried to leave it at what fits their comfort level, but for some reason in this case, I'm struggling with that.
Help! What do you think?
(Julianna's right around the corner of this issue, but I'm apt to be more familiar with the material or more willing to read it myself first. I really don't have a lot of interest in the genres that grab Jacob.)
I have 1 husband and 4 kids, 28, 20, 11 and 9...I'll be doing the mom thing forever, hence 4evermom.
4 comments:
I really wanted Benjamin to wait until he was 12 before these...and later than that for the Maze Runner. However, before I had expressed that to him, he had read it in the classroom. It was one of the books his teacher had out for them to choose from.
I read a lot of books too early, but with these books I think our children read them differently than we do. They're going to get the overt themes, but aren't going to draw the same disturbing parallels to current society that we adults do.
That being said, you have to go with what feels right to you. You know your son best.
It is funny, because I had almost this same discussion with a friend on twitter last night.
We have this same issue. And it is often a struggle, because my kids are often way past the books offered to them.
Dash read them just last month. He turned 12 this summer. I think I was a little surprised he had read them (he got them from the library at his school which is 5th & 6th grade, so apparently they deemed them appropriate for their students). I think I might have wanted to have read them first. But, in the end, I think it was ok.
We went through this this summer as well, when he begged me to let him read Lord of the Flies. I finally relented, but talked to him ahead of time about some of the themes of the book and told him to come and talk to me if there was anything that bothered him.
I've read the Hunger Games series and I'll honestly say that I'm a tad more conservative, and don't feel they're appropriate for an 11 year old. Of course, my girlfriend let her 12 year old daughter read them and thought they were fine... though it made me uncomfortable hearing it.
A few of my friends sons are reading the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series - and say they love them.
It really depends on the kid. We had staved off Diary of a Wimpy Kid for our 2nd grader, but he got it yesterday at the book fair and zoomed through it overnight. He loved it. He took the whole afternoon of his half day in his room, cracking up every few minutes. We were so pleased.
Until this morning, when we discovered that he woke up early (not unusual) and took a sharpie to doodle Diary-style gross jokes on an heirloom tablecloth with signatures from family parties through the decade with many from loved ones who have died.
He knows better than to use a sharpie for anything. And I should have known better than to give him the book because while many second graders are a great target audience for Wimpy Kid, my son is too young for it.
That said--I was sad that the fifth grader from whom I borrowed Hunger Games was reading it. I will tell my kids that I do not think they should read it until at least middle school, but again--that's my kids and their maturity levels. I work at keeping them young as long as possible (and I know you do too).
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