I am a highly educated “potato”. 
I hang out and watch football with my sports loving husband and I read terrible books. And, I just want my kids to be happy.
Even if you miss cues from books or meaning, you learn from that and that in itself is meaningful. It helps with vocal, reading comprehension, context, sentence structure, composition, etc. Using the Little Women examples, maybe a very younger read wouldn’t make the immediate connection that Beth died. But later on would go, “Huh. Interesting. I guess she died and that’s what the author meant.” Or that benediction could be used in different ways to mean different things. Or you reread your old favorites later on in life and get something new out of them. I know there are books I’ve read as a mother that mean different things to me than they did before motherhood. It’s all good IMO.
Interesting discussion. I do appreciate it. I would not say I was “critical” of the 5-year-old reading “Little Women,” more like “perplexed” about what she would be getting out of a book about much older girls.
I am all in favor of any 5-year-old reading “The Scottish Play,” if he is being pushed to “wade through slaughter to a throne” by an ambitious and unprincipled spouse–or even has any conception of what would be involved there.
Incidentally, a high-school lit teacher that I really liked advised us to read “Look Homeward, Angel” while we were still in high school, or else not pick it up until we were about 40–interesting advice.
Well QM, if you have a particular 5 year old in mind, you could always get a copy of Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare and see how much (s)he understands… !
Oh, @mathmom This is my favorite “not quite getting what you read” story. In third grade, my D had to give a presentation about a famous person. D chose Sarah Bernhardt because D was in a community theatre group and loved to act. That year was an awful one for me, so I didn’t help at all with the report or listen to it before the presentation.
Well, as you may know…Sarah Bernhardt’s mother was a courtesan. The adult book about her my kid read to prepare for the presentation said it more coyly. The wording was something like this “Sarah’s mother broke the 7th commandment with many men.”
My D gave her presentation and announced that Sarah’s mother was a thief who partnered with many men in committing thefts.
Her third grade teacher hadn’t a clue where my kid had gotten the idea that Sarah’s mother was a thief from, but was relieved that she didn’t have to discuss call girls with her 3rd grade class. She assumed I had “white lied” to my D. I hadn’t. I had no idea either because I hadn’t read the book.
Anyone figure out how my D misunderstood? Protestants and Catholics number the 10 commandments differently. For Protestants, the 7th commandment is “Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery.” For Catholics, it’s “Thou Shall Not Steal.”
“So, I believe that exposing a young child to classical music, including playing an instrument, or reading literature (s)he might not fully understand, also benefits a child. Delaying exposure to a later date when a child can develop better technique in playing an instrument or can fully comprehend the themes of a book doesn’t seem “sensible” to me.”
I was one of those who saw no problem with kids reading ‘adult’ books at a young age, I made the argument that even if they can’t understand it totally there is benefit to it. With music I would be the last person to say a kid shouldn’t be exposed to music until they are older or play and instrument, the issue with prodigies (which is kind of tangential to this discussion, I was answering someone else) isn’t that they are young and playing, prodigy is a term reserved for kids playing at a very high level very young, and with prodigies it often is they have been pushed by teachers and parents and they haven’t been allowed to develop normally. A 5 year old kid picking up the violin and playing around with it, or taking lessons at their own pace, because they found they love it, is not what I was talking about, and a 5 year old kid who picks up shakespeare and starts reading it is fine, on the other hand the flashcard parent telling them to read it, quizzing them, even though the kid isn’t interested is not. With music prodigies, the harm isn’t them playing music, and my son who is now strong on both the violin and in music theory, when he was playing as a little kid didn’t understand the music theory behind the music but loved playing, he progressed and grew, went back to pieces, learned more, which is akin to a 5 year old picking up little women or shakespeare and reading and re-reading it, each time they pick something up they didn’t know, it is natural, driven by the kids curiousity…
The harm of the prodigy, or putting a book in a kids hand they aren’t really interested in, is it takes away the kids natural curiousity and turns it into something pushed from outside. A parent giving a kid shakespeare to read because they want to brag about how smart their kids is, a parent who puts an instrument in a kids hand, forces them to practice hours on end, has a teacher encouraging them to rush ahead to get to X piece so they can go on stage and play it, are harmful, whereas the kid doing it as their interest and curiousity dictates is not harmful.
I think it can be very difficult to find literature that’s appropriate in content for students who read above grade level. Just as you would hesitate before allowing a 7-year-old to attend a PG-13 movie, there’s reason to hesitate before allowing a child that age to read a book with PG-13 content, even if the child is capable of reading the book.
Little Women is actually quite horrifying if you read it carefully. In addition to Beth’s death (which is arguably her older sisters’ fault because she dies from long-term complications of scarlet fever that she would not have caught if one of them had visited the Hummels in her place), you have Jo deliberately allowing Amy to skate on thin ice, with Amy falling through the ice as a result; Beth neglecting her pet bird during a temporary vacation from household chores, causing the bird to die of starvation; the girls’ father serving in the army during the Civil War and developing a life-threatening illness during his service; 16- and 15-year-old girls having to work for a living because of a family financial crisis; Laurie threatening to kill himself when Jo rejects his romantic advances; the Hummel family coming close to starvation with no safety net other than individual charity to help them; the Hummels’ baby dying of scarlet fever in Beth’s arms; and various other fairly heavy matters. It’s definitely a PG-13 book (and one that held up pretty well when I reread it last year).
I’ve been following this thread for a few days. The whole reading thing fascinates me. My children (and myself) picked up books, gave them a shot, put them down or devoured them, tried them again later (or not)–but it never occurred to me to try to restrict what they read. It wouldn’t have been possible. Some stuff I loved they hated. Some stuff I hated they loved. We read Harry Potter together all the way through to book 6. Book 7 was three copies and three people in different locations.
My parents would have had a terrible time trying to restrict my reading. I read everything I could get my hands on, and we had a large library. My mother also sent me to the public library all the time, to get me out of her hair. I went there on my bicycle, which I also rode everywhere. I played math games for the sheer fun of it. When I discovered computers in high school (1971) I tried to get more involved but it was impossible. But I was mostly inquisitive and independent and unsupervised.
My children are both pretty damn smart. They were a challenge to educate, because (basically) they were smarter and quicker thinkers than the vast majority of their teachers. When my son was in sixth grade, his sixth grade teachers basically passed on even trying to cope with him, and he was in seventh grade classes by the end of the second week of school. He took calculus as a tenth grader (and taught the class for two weeks at the end of the year when his teacher was ill), and I started him in AP biology (without any previous bio) that year as well, because I thought perhaps that would provide him with a challenge. (At conferences, his teacher said “I questioned that decision for the first week. After that, I decided you were right.”) As a junior, the college counselor recommended he apply to colleges that year, because he’d run out of courses to take at his school. He went to MIT at 16. Trying to hold him back just ticked him off; he was bored silly most of the time in school. He never did homework unless he thought it was interesting. But… Once he got to MIT, he thrived.
My daughter was different in her approach. She read everything she could, once she learned to read (halfway through first grade). She soaked up learning and rarely challenged her teachers. But she also bloomed in college, getting commendations from the faculty for her creativity and intellect. She’s now back in school, getting ready to apply to graduate school, and is finding it possible to excel even with going to school full time and working half time.
How to raise a genius? Get the <> out of their way, as much as possible.
I’ve pretty much forgotten Little Women - when I was young I liked Little Men and maybe even Jo’s Boys better. In college I liked Rose in Bloom best and wrote a paper about it and some other 19th century novels about the Settlement House movement. I found in a general way that turn of the century novels were good choices for my voracious readers. Frances Hodgson Burnett, E. Nesbit, Gene Stratton-Porter all provided meaty reading mostly G-rated.
Thank you, Marian! You may be the only one who agrees with me on this thread!
Re doschicos post #172: It is a gift for a young person to be able to sit and listen quietly to a concert. I mean this sincerely. I am all in favor of having children listen to classical music; but when they are very young, in our family that would only be possible through recordings played at home, or occasional televised concerts.
The following are behaviors I have observed among future National Merit Scholars, when they were about 5. I realize that the cut-off to be a National Merit Scholar is lower than the cut-off to be a “genius,” but the NMF’s are supposed to be in the top 1/2 of 1% of high school seniors in each state. These are all different children:
Crawling around under a table at a restaurant, kicking a friend during a disagreement, getting lost in a snow-storm while traveling 4 blocks between elementary school and home (1 turn), being unable to watch the animated cartoon “Jungle Book” in a movie theater all the way through while remaining quiet, having trouble tying shoe-laces (well, that is just one that I heard about rather than having seen, but that person is unquestionably a genius), bursting out with the answer to a question after having been told to remain quiet, pushing other children around, and breaking another child’s tooth during a fight in a Gifted and Talented pull-out program (in fact, that was an older boy, 9 or 10).
Nobody in this group was under 5. If only they had been trying to emulate Meg from “Little Women!” If only Meg weren’t so annoying! (That’s my recollection from childhood. I don’t think anyone has posted whether she was supposed to seem annoying or not.)
Incidentally, my spouse and I have both given up on “Game of Thrones” as too violent for us.
I so agreed with this. They need to understand what’s “normal” before being introduced to deviant behavior imo.
fwiw, I always liked Meg, who was just trying to do the right thing. But I far preferred Little Men. All the Pilgrims Progress references went way over my head as a child.
Another here, who read everything as a kid, from about age 7 on. The most traumatizing thing I remember reading was a Jehovah’s Witness tract lying around the house. We were Unitarians, but the more faithful religions fascinated me.
I liked Amy because she was the artist and Jo because she was the most fun.
I don’t really think kids should read everything. I also would rather have them read about healthy normal sex before reading about rape. That said, we have a house full of books, not all of them age appropriate. I don’t think my kids read anything wildly inappropriate, but I know my parents didn’t always know just exactly what I was reading of theirs when they weren’t around. (At age 11 or 12, not 5!) Knowing my parents it’s quite possible some of those books were accidentally on purpose available.
I’ve must admit that never read “Little Women.”
Our house had mostly religion-related books when I was growing up. I was taught to read using the McGuffey Readers. I recall adults being surprised when I read “The Robe” at an early age. I can’t recall how young I was, but when any translation other than King James is apostate, I guess advanced reading skills are necessary. “Pilgrim’s Progress” and the Chronicles of Narnia were required elementary school reading in the school I attended.
After reading CS Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy, I found I liked science fiction. I found a list of top science fiction books and read “Brave New World” and “1984” in 7th or 8th grade. They saved me from a lifetime of reading religious propaganda, and I’m forever grateful to their authors. By high school I was using my paper route money to subscribe to OMNI magazine.
Part of my science fiction collection lived in DS17’s room (that was where it fit), and every year or so I’d dig through and tell him “These books are great, and you are ready to read them now.” I held off on recommending most of the Vonnegut and Harlan Ellison until about 9th grade. When they got to reading dystopian fiction in 11th grade, the only book on the list of choices that DS hadn’t already read was “Handmaid’s Tale.”
I recall that when a bunch of kids were reading the first “Hunger Games” book in 5th grade, DS17 was very upset that they were reading it as an adventure novel glorifying the game instead of as a dystopian novel commenting on reality-TV society.
As far as bad parental judgement goes, I think my parents’ decision to let me watch the Hitchcock film “The Birds” with them on TV at age 5 ranks up there somewhere.
That all said, I don’t know why kindergarten teachers feel the need to read “Charlotte’s Web” to 5-year-olds.
Our S burst into tears and had to leave the classroom when the teacher read “3 Billy Goats Gruff” to 4 year olds. He didn’t like the troll threatening the goats. He also was upset by “James & the Giant Peach,” because the parents were killed and aunt was mean, also when he was 4. All the kids in his class paid more attention to his reactions than the story.
He was happy he was allowed to go the the director’s air conditioned office and read books of his choice instead. The teacher was surprised by his sensitivity.
This is the kid who at 3 would play with the dinosaurs by separating the carnivores from the herbivores, having the carnivores kill themselves off and play with the remaining herbivores. Not sure what he did with the omnivores.
What an interesting kid!
The more I encounter, the more I subscribe to the Vulcan philosophy of IDIC: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations–except as applied just here on Earth.
The sensitivity shown by HImom’s son, and by Ynotgo’s S17 when he was back in 5th grade and they were reading “The Hunger Games,” is in my opinion as important to nourish as resilience, though resilience gets much better press, in general. Sensitivity is particularly valuable when the person is sensitive to injury or threats to someone else. I think that the combination of that type of sensitivity + courage + some practical planning capability characterized many of the heroes who rescued children and adults from the Holocaust. It is a valuable combination of characteristics in many situations, though, not limited to genocide.
In terms of “How to Raise a Genius,” if the genius appears to be sensitive, then I think that a very important quality to develop in the child is courage. A genius is not likely to have difficulty with the practical planning capability.
I am not sure whether too much exposure to the world’s ills at a young age helps to develop courage, or whether it is more likely to turn the young genius into a clone of Petey Otterloop from “Cul de Sac,” who spends as much time as possible in bed reading “Little Neuro” comics.
On reflection, it is interesting to me that so much of the discussion of how to raise a genius has focused on the intellectual challenges, and relatively speaking so little on qualities of character.
As an addendum: I am sure that Charlotte’s Web would make me cry, if I read it again now. In Charlotte’s Web, death is followed by birth. This is perhaps the best “answer” to death that we have. I understand that this was prompted in part by the research, but still . . .
Also, I am curious, because I cannot recall: In Little Women, after Beth has died, do the other characters still refer to Beth? (missing her, wishing she were around, thinking that she would have enjoyed something they were doing?) Or is she just totally gone?
@Marian, even “School Library Journal,” which tends to be pretty conservative, says “Little Women” is appropriate for Grades 4-7, which would be roughly ages 9-12.
QM, Are you sure you didn’t just read the British version of “Little Women?” In the US, “Little Women” is actually “Little Women” AND “Good Wives” combined into one book. In the latter book, Meg really struggles with being a mom, neglects her H to pay attention to her kids, and has to have Marmee straighten her out. She also drinks way too much tea. (This really stuck with me, for some reason.) It actually is one of those books that gives you the idea that doing “grown up things” may be tougher than you thought and getting married isn’t just about the wedding. Jo not wanting to get married to Laurie seems really understandable!!! But hey I was 8–not 5-- when I read it.
I guess I’m a bit of an outlier. I wouldn’t consider myself gifted and certainly wasn’t a gifted child. I was, however, a voracious reader. I was the ONLY reader in my family and most of the time, my parents hadn’t a clue what I was reading. However, I was a “goody two shoes” kid, so if I start reading something with vivid sex scenes, I’ d feel uncomfortable and stop. I read everything by Alcott I could get my hands on when I was 8. (My favorite was Jack and Jill–yeah, I was an odd kid.) I don’t recall if Beth is still remembered by her sisters in the book, but if I remember correctly in one of the later books Amy and Laurie name her daughter for her.
I don’t think kids should read everything, but I have no problem with “Little Women.” I read “Charlotte’s Web” to my when she was in kindergarten. Do some of you have a problem with the “Little House” books too? Lots of bad things happen in those books. Mary going blind is just one of them. I assume that you didn’t read or let your kids read Grimm’s Fairy Tales either.
May I ask what the heck your kids did read if all of these were taboo?
Isn’t Charlotte’s Web supposed to make you cry (read to the entire grade by our second-grade teacher–all of us cried)? Why would that be a bad thing? I remember crying when Scarlett’s daughter dies in Gone with the Wind, too. (I was twelve.) I was terrified by the apocalyptic visions of 1984 (12, again). Books are supposed to play with your emotions, why else would you read them?
Yes, I was surprised S’s preschool teacher said I needed to “toughen” S. I loved him as he was and figured he would be just fine, and he was.
Both S and D had to have movies carefully pre-chosen. They didn’t like scary scenes and villains until they were much older–10 and 12. I was just fine with that. They both screamed and hid with the evil queen/witch in Snow White and Ursula in little mermaid.
We had to leave during the beginning of Three Mousketeers because they screamed during the torture scene. (The theater manager gave us a rain check for a future movie instead and we didn’t let dad choose a movie again for some time.)
Both kids are just fine now, in their 20s. Both have seen and read their share of violence and gore. D even majored in cinema.