Reply #58: Well, I'm not a parent, but here's my perspective.

[Withywindle]

The first ever major world historical event I have a vivid memory of was the Jonestown massacre. I was 9. I didn't study it in school - I stole my parents' TIME magazine with all the bodies on the cover and hid it under my bed and meditated over it every night, trying to understand. (My mom's best friend had committed suicide 2 years before and I knew she was messed up about it still and I was trying to wrap my brain around death and people killing themselves). And yeah, I cried. I cried buckets. But I never told anyone about my obsession.

I didn't really understand those feelings until about 3 years later when I read 'The Diary of Anne Frank' (again, not in school - I was a bookworm who did it for fun) and then felt that feeling again - of trying to relate to someone who had died in a horrible event of history. That book made it much easier for me, because it was by a girl around my age, who I felt I would have been friends with if we'd met. Then I started reading books on the Holocaust, and yes, looking at death camp pictures...and again, cried buckets. I kept thinking of Anne, who'd become like an invisible friend to me, the way characters in books one truly loves do.

Yes, these were disturbing experiences. Maybe too much for my tender years, from an adult's perspective. Do I regret them, wish I'd stayed "innocent" longer? No. I don't idealize innocence, I think it's artificial, for the most part. I think those experiences were crucial to whatever sense of empathy and social conscience I have now. THAT starts in childhood too, if it's ever going to exist.