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Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

The insistence of parents to control their children via censorship and other means, as well as view them as some perfect child is more harmful than any porn.

The fact that the article itself and comments to the article talk about kids learning about such things from other kids and websites instead of their parents is pretty much case and point.

There is no downside to talking to your kid about sexuality and other things at, say, 10. Common rebuttals to such an idea is usually centered around the false notion that if the parent doesn't speak of it, then the child will never know. This couldn't be any more false.

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"Censorship" here is a big scary word for very basic common sense parenting: recognizing that kids of different ages, personalities, and emotional maturity are not ready to be exposed to some things.

I agree with your assessment that parents should talk to their kids more about difficult topics at all ages, in an age-appropriate way, of course.

But you can take this too far and end up with the idea that parents should be fine with their kids seeing any kind of sexual, violent, or other disturbing content no matter their age or maturity level.

But why is that too far to assume a child can be exposed to the same things as an adult, ask the same questions, etc? There's this concept that if a child is exposed to something too early it will corrupt their morality or sensibilities and I just don't see it.

I'm not a child psychologist or mental health professional, so I'm not sure what to tell you, except that it seems reasonable to me to think that just maybe exposing kids to certain types of materials before they have the experience, emotional maturity, etc, to process those things can be incredibly damaging. And I really doubt that trying to avoid my 3 year old daughter watching violent pornography is going to harm her, but yeah, I don't have the data. Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith.

Your 3 year old daughter is definitely the demographic in danger of her school mates introducing her to violent pornography, yes.

Well I'm not sure about corrupting their morality or sensibilities, but strong violence or scary movies can certainly affect a small child more than an adult. My son would have nightmares for days after seeing something too scary for him. Plus some things you can't explain properly to a small child because they don't have the capacity to understand at that point (ex: unusual types of sex acts).

> "Censorship" here is a big scary word for very basic common sense parenting: recognizing that kids of different ages, personalities, and emotional maturity are not ready to be exposed to some things.

Though there's the other common-sense side to this, which is recognizing that there are things your kid is going to be exposed to regardless of whether you think they're ready for it (in this case, hearing about sex from their agemates at school). At which point it becomes a choice between introducing it yourself and doing the best you can, or hoping it all works out when you're not involved.

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