Welcome to Gaia :: What would you stop your kids from reading ?

Hey Gaians just wondering what would you let your kids not read . For those who are not parents, what would you not allow .

Nothing.
I honestly don't think it's fair to limit what a child can or cannot read.
My mother hasn't put any limits on me, and I will not put limits on my children.

I've found that, a lot of the time, when a parent bans their child from reading a book it is simply because they don't understand what the book is about.

It depends on their age really, I wouldn't want my (hypothetical) 5 year old looking through the Karma Sutra, and there are just some books that are meant for adults and may have a bad influence on children.

As far as books go, I'd let my kid read whatever they wanted - I'll be overjoyed if my kids enjoy reading half as much as I do. I was really lucky as a kid to have parents who strongly supported my reading habits (a Batman action figure was out of the question, but if I wanted a personal library that was A-okay in their book. As a kid, I thought that kind of sucked, but now I realize it formed the foundation of who I am today and I'm eternally grateful) and I plan on being the same kind of parent.

Magazines, though, are a different story. If I end up with a daughter, she won't read Cosmo or any bullshit like that as long as I'm around. And my son won't be boning up on Maxim or suchlike either. I've read enough of those magazines to know they're full of bullshit that may impress the wrong idea on young, growing minds. Seen it happen a couple of times too, ain't all that pretty....

Honestly, I can't imagine many kids under a certain age WANTING to read grown-up books. But hey, if mine did... I might DISCOURAGE them from reading certain books that seem to contain anything really graphic, if they were the kind of kids who are deeply affected by that. I would probably... not necessarily ban but VERY STRONGLY DISCOURAGE those shitty Chicken Soup books, and the Face On The Milk Carton series, and The Tale of Despereaux, and those shitty teen high school series books. If they pick that stuff up at a friend's house and want to read it? Fine. But I feel that if a child is old enough to want to read grown-up books, they're old enough to understand the concept of having to do some extra chores to earn their own money for something I disapprove of.

I might also add that I fully intend to read grown-up books to my kids. Both my parents read to us kids to put us to sleep every night, and they'd alternate kids books like The Boxcar Children with grownup books like Jurrassic Park and I, Robot and Agatha Christie mysteries and Ray Bradbury's short stories. My mother told me she used to just skim over the really gorey bits and fill in stuff she'd make up on the spot. She also used to recite poetry to us and challenge us to figure out what it meant to amuse us on long car rides.

God have mercy on any children of mine.

Honestly, I have no idea. I'm not a parent, I'm paralyzed at the very idea of being a parent, I'm a terrible enough influence on my nieces and nephews. I have no idea how I'd handle having children and how I'd go about overseeing (if at all) their literary development in that respect.

I wouldn't. Kids these days already read all the junk the internet has to offer. Should a child/offspring decide to pick up a book and read it, then I'm the last person to stop them. Reading a book is more effort than watching youtube or whatever happens to be on TV after all.

The question I have is how do you get kids to enjoy reading?

Depends on their age, and what they're interested in reading.

I wouldn't let them read about anything controversial I hadn't already talked to them about, but that's where it ends.

This if flagrantly ignoring the fact I plan on never reproducing.