Radio news too graphic when children can hear

Couldn't agree more mishap

Oh God! I do not want my grandsons to hear of this. But I know they will.

I agree Mishap

My DGS was upset by an item of news he'd heard on the radio. He was probably 7 or 8. The nurse came in to weigh and measure all the children in his class, DGS went into complete meltdown and refused to go. After much sobbing we finally discovered that he had heard on the radio that obese children were being taken into care and away from their abusive parents. He really thought his time had come! Poor kid was inconsolable. They absorb much more information than we ever realise. He wasn't in any way obese, maybe slightly chunky, in a lovely cuddly little boy way.

While I would never gratuitously inflict gory details of a terrible event like this on a child. I would not shield a child from the hearing the basic details of this dreadful event on the news.

In the early 1950s when I was about 9 we lived in Singapore. The local paper ran a whole series of graphic articles about the horrors of the Japanese occupation and what happened in the POW camps. My parents went to great lengths to keep these articles from me, I was an avid newspaper reader, but I read them nevertheless.
The stories were horrific but they helped me to understand more of what was going on around me. Why local people hated the Japanese so, why someone's behaviour would be explained among adults as,'he was prisoner at Changi'. At much the same time I read many of the books published then on the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. Again references to these were part of public discourse and it helped my understanding of the world around me. I didn't glory in what I read. I found it truly horrific, but it didn't give me nightmares.

We are very lucky that we can protect our children if we want to. Pity the more children in Syria and the middle east whose parents would give anything to spare them the experience of seeing and suffering the things we protect our children from knowing about.

flicketyB I am beyond sorry that we can't protect all the suffering children in the world but the fact is we can't. I took mishaps post to be concerned about the graphic detail in the news item. Too much information. My post was lighthearted in comparison but that news item directly affected my grandson as it applied to what was happening to him on that day. I learned from an aunt about the Invasion of Singapore, her Fiancee died in the Far East, she could only imagine what happened to him.

I think it was entirely reasonable to say that this poor man had been murdered, but that the level of detail was too graphic and should have been saved till much later in the day.

My SIL was complaining about the graphic front pages on display after one of the Israeli horrors. He said it was very difficult to explain it to his 8 year old who wanted to know what was happening.

Yes, our poor little ones mustn't be subjected to these horrors must they? So what about all the children living in war zones such as Syria, seeing friends blown to pieces, stepping on land mines, living in refugee camps, or seeing their parents being slaughtered by Isis, slowly starving to death in famines or sold into sexual slavery at a tender age?

If all we have to worry about is our children hearing about this then I count myself lucky

As ever, I can see both points of view over this.

Mishap,Jane, Jings et al of course you are right, but in another way, Anya makes a good point.

As with too many things, I sit on the fence to the point where I get splinters up my arse in my brain to the extent where it hurts.

The one thing that I do know for sure, is that acts of atrocity committed in the name of religion are a fucking damnable obscenity.

Sorry for the strong language, feel free to complain to HQ if you want to.

Sadly the children in these "war zones" cannot avoid the hideous reality of their daily lives – and look at the awful psychological damage it does to them. I don't think that means that children who live in a different country and culture need to face up to all the details of the same reality. It is possible to talk to them about the terrible things happening in the world and engage their interest, understanding and compassion without telling them, for example, that someone was put in a cage and deliberately burned to death. I have not forgotten the indescribable horror and fear I felt when I first learned about Nazi concentration camps as a result of reading newspapers during the trial of Adolf Eichmann. My family was on holiday in Wales and night after night I awoke the whole hotel with the screams and sobbing in my nightmares.

We have laws and systems in place in this country to protect children from physical and sexual abuse in the home, school, and places of recreation.
What is wrong, Anya, with wanting to protect them also from hearing at a too young age about the most brutal atrocities imaginable?
It is hard enough for us as adults to process all this.
Yes, children must learn eventually about man's inhumanity to man.
But the fact that some are suffering horribly doesn't justify destroying the innocence of others at a very young age.

Im putting another side to the discussion Jane , one which is worth considering.

As parents we choose when and how we introduce our children to life's cruelties and we need to retain that right and not have that usurped by the BBC. We cannot fully shelter them from this I know, but we know our own children and can judge when the time is right. I am not suggesting that news bulletins should be squeaky clean - heaven knows they are 100% miserable news - but the sort of detail that we heard about the burning of this man locked in a cage is really a step too far.

I am only too aware of the misery that children in other places (and some in our own country) are suffering and am very sad about that, but spreading that suffering to our own children does not add to the sum of human happiness.

They will hear all about this dreadful stuff soon enough and hopefully at a time and in a place where we can help them to deal with it. The news was blasting this level of detail out repeatedly during the day - I switched it off of course, but not before it was out there and able to settle in small ears.

Wow! some very strong opinions here, all of which are valid, as a presenter of a local community radio show: NMFM 106.6
https://www.facebook.com/nanasnatter
I find it hard to convey topical news in a manner which is befitting all ears, my remit is primarily to entertain and raise issues that need awareness, and cover what's going on in my local community, but I agree that in this era of modern technology we do not need graphic detail on a radio broadcast, if you want/need to know more then just Google it!

I am always interested in others views and if you would like to have your say then please do contact me on the above page.

I sometimes think we are far too protective of our children. An adult's job is not to conceal the horrible things in life from our children but to mediate and explain them.

As a child I always knew when something was being withheld from me because it was considered to frightening/distressing etc etc. I became very good at reading or in other ways finding out what it was as I detailed above. No matter how dreadful what I read it was better than worrying about what was being concealed.

I always told my children any bad news, let them read newspapers, hear news and then discuss the issue if it was something horrendous.

The horrors that gave me nightmares as a child and my son also was what we read in books. I read Jane Eyre when I was about 11 and the scene with the mad woman terrified me. Like wise the witches meeting in Witchwood by John Buchan. But real life, never.

I do think that it depends on age and the child's personality. What one child might cope with another might have nightmares over. My DGS at age 9 wept buckets night after night after seeing War Horse - he just could not handle the idea that people could be so cruel - it truly changed him substantially. He would take it better now at age 12, but it was just too soon.

My feeling is that children need to be allowed a bit of childhood before man's inhumanity to man is thrust down their throats.

I too can see both points of view. Many years ago the daughter of a dear friend heard on the news a bought a child being abducted from her bed. It had such a profound effect on this 8 year old that she was unable to cope with being apart from her mother and would sleep in her parents room for many years to come. The effects lasted well into her 20s and only recently has she been able to move on. An extreme result I know but it can happen.

I was 8yrs old when WW2 ended and can remember screaming in terror because my Mum put on the light without closing the curtains , I had been let listen to the declaration that the war was over , on the radio . The information passed over my head because I was so used to the aeroplanes going over and being crouched under the table , so it is hard to know what makes an impression

We have the control.....literally. We can turn off tv and radio news and watch/listen at a time when small people aren't around. My DGD and I watch the more appropriate Newsround and discuss issues which arise. This is not their time to be exposed to man's inhumanity.....l.we wouldn't take them to a horror movie so why expose them to real life horror? I can't even watch news reports or read anything about that poor Jordanian pilot, I just want to run from the horror of it. My DGC would be beside themselves.

I grew up in dangerous times. We were in Egypt in the early fifties during the overthrowing of the monarchy and then in Aden in the years leading up to the end of British rule. As children we trusted our parents to keep us safe and when something scary happened, like the burning of our local NAAFI which we used two or three times a week, we were told it was nothing to worry about.

When I was eleven a friend was taken out of class to be told his mother had been killed by a grenade that had been thrown out of a bus. The rest of us were told by a teacher. Nobody cried. It was just stuff that happened.

I can really understand a child being terrified by hearing about barbaric events on the radio or television because it's not our way of life. If my grandchildren were still small I would check on the internet before switching on the telly. They don't need to be frightened about something they won't understand.

Likewise Merlot - we were stationed in Germany in the early 60's at the height of the Cold War. Practice nuclear alerts were part of the background of my early teenage years. The siren would sound and if it didn't come back down after a set number of seconds then it was a real attack. I remember walking home from the school bus, freezing to the spot and frantically counting seconds in my head on hearing the alert. It's a terror that has never left me so I will do my utmost to protect my DGCs from unsuitable material while they are small and still believe in Santa. Time enough later.

It's a tough one, isn't it? Personally, I wouldn't have the news on when there are small children around but we know we can't keep them protected for ever. My sensible DGS of 11 became very anxious recently about the ebola crisis and was immune to all reassurance and careful explanations. In then end, it was only when his dad said 'Don't be daft. You're not going to get it and neither are we' that his fears were assuaged.

We were posted Northern Ireland in the early 1980s, and I know that my children were often worried about what might happen to us, because they obviously picked up news reports about the latest IRA attacks, especially when they blew up the local bar. But you can't protect them from everything.

My grandmother took the "News of the World" on Sundays, and I remember struggling through the reports of all sorts of cases - sexual ones where "intimacy took place" and others, quite luridly reported, about atrocities. Children have all sorts of antennae!