this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
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I've been around enough to know they respect sometimes not being treated like children.
I'm not saying that a child who's not ready for something should be forced to deal with it. The role of a parent is to be a safety net they can run back to every time the world gets a little too scary—literally, there are studies about this. But for a child that is ready, who wants to know, what I mean to find out is why you would reject them.
See, the worry I have is that things like this are the reason those adults don't understand it. In some respects, these adults are still children because they were never given the opportunity to learn.
And it's not like it can't be useful to them. The fact that people can be abused, like certain aspects of it, then hate themselves for liking any part of it—I mean, I can think of a few "left alone with uncle" situations that really ring true here. If they can't understand what they themselves are going through, I really don't know what hope they have.
Just to reiterate, I'm not saying we should gather up every 4-year-old and show them a snuff film. What I am saying is that, to some degree, growing up is a self-directed process, and when somebody is ready to tackle something, they should at least be given the chance to experiment with those ideas. Even for adults: only as much as they can handle, and a warm, comfortable room when they can't anymore.
Ah, I see. While I think you've got a really rose tinted view of childhood that very much is at odds with what I understand childhood development to look like, that's probably just because I'm a very jaded bitch. But that said, I've been under the impression you think it should be the job of panelists or strangers to educate children. If we're talking about a child I know, that I could reasonably judge would be able to understand the concepts and not be freaked out by them, then sure that would be fine.
But there is no way for me to judge that about somebody else's kid - and it's ridiculous that someone would think other people should be comfortable being forced into that situation (ie, the people bringing their children to these kinds of panels). I'm sure glad their parents might think they're ready to face concepts from Paw Patrol After Dark, but so many parents are just neglectful bastards, or assume that their kids are ready for mature topics when they are clearly not. Hazbin isn't exactly 'toybox killer tapes' levels of fucked up, but it's certainly got some content that could really mess up a kid's perspective of the world if they weren't careful, and those topics are absolutely discussed at panels like this, hence why the panelists in question are uncomfortable having children in the audience.
I guess my point here is that while I do broadly agree with your point, and that I am (and even have been in the past) perfectly comfortable talking to kids about my scars (most of them now just emotional, yay), I'm not comfortable talking to every/any kid about that, and that's been what I've understood you to be arguing in favor of. Sorry for that!
(Imo, the role of a parent should be to regulate when self-directed discovery should be and is encouraged, and when it should be curtailed until the child in question is ready to experience a given topic. A difficult line to walk, yes, but a pretty important one. Children are notoriously bad judges of what they are actually ready for, and you can't build up an immunity to emotional trauma Dread Pirate Roberts style....)