Ah, the 80s. How memorable they are!

[heidi]

matociquala has put together an amazing collection of 80s music videos here, which led to me looking for

Watch on YouTube

and caused me to create the following poll:

[Poll #1101876]

Oh, and speaking of the 80s, Slate Magazine asks the question, "Should children read Philip Pullman's trilogy—or the incest classic Flowers in the Attic?"

I guess people can't read both? There's a limited number of words one's brain can read in a month or a year or a decade? Huh.

The article is definitely not perfect, and there's some apples-and-avocados comparisons, but I found this paragraph of particular interest given recent actions by 6A:

At the same time, when I think back to my own preteen reading, I'll admit that the whole point was to read books that I wasn't ready for, without my parents' approval. Is this kind of illicit read damaging to kids, or is it an inevitable excursion into pseudo-maturity that beats a lot of the other likely avenues? Better a disturbing, too-adult book than an indelibly horrifying movie or Internet game or video (or, it goes without saying, an encounter with real scary people)?

Comments

[laleonaenojada.livejournal.com]

I definitely had limits on what I could read/watch/do as a child, and I don't think any but a few were especially arbitrary. I couldn't see R-rated movies until I was 17 unless my mother or father watched it first and approved (oddly, this was a rule primarily related to profanity, not sex or violence). I wasn't allowed to get my ears pierced until I was ten, mostly so I would be mature enough to take care of them myself.

I remember Danielle Steel being off limits until about 12 or 13, and the same for Stephen King. The one book I have strong memories about reading despite being told not to was "Go Ask Alice" ... I would read it in the back corner of the library at my middle school because I couldn't check it out and take it home, and the librarian was a friend of my dad's so I didn't want her to see me reading it either. Ultimately, I don't feel damaged for having limits, and once I reached my teenage years, I was allowed to read whatever I wanted.

I guess the big thing for me is, if your kids want to read /watch /play something that has moral themes you find questionable or disagree with, the key may not be preventing them from reading it, but reading it with them, or at least having frequent conversations about it.