Appropriate Topics for Multi-age Playtime

As I read your post, I am thinking of a movie I watched last night with Colin Firth. I missed the beginning of it, but enjoyed what I saw. He was an inventor or a sort, had several children, and lived in a great house (England) with lots of servants. His son (the narrator of the story) was very intelligent and asked his father lots of questions. However, his dad's answers were always a bit "out there", without giving a whole lot of practical detail. So the boy started pulling down books in the library in order to figure out what was what.

He read a chapter in a book about prostitution. In his narrating, he said that it was the most interesting reading he had ever done at that point in his life. At the dinner table that night, in front of the entire family, the minister, and friends, he proceeded to tell everyone that his father and his friends should take advantage of the ministrations of prostitutes, along with an entire explanation from the book.

You can imagine the shock and silence at the table. The father asked him to come with him to the library. The son asked what he said that was wrong. All of a sudden, the minister started to laugh. Then everyone laughed. (The grandmother started to cry during her laughter because her husband had died and she missed him, but that's another part of the story. They had to carry her out.)

The point I'm making with this extreme example is that even though you want to nurture an environment where sex is considered normal and biological, and you don't want them to feel that there's something wrong with talking about it EVER, you have to put the brakes on the when and where of these discussions. Children have to be taught discretion. They really don't HAVE any discretion unless you teach it to them. Think of it this way. Let's say you let the 12 year old boy continue the discussion. One of the other kids goes home and tells her mom all about this 12 year old boy's discussion. You get a phone call from an irate mother asking why a teenage boy is talking to her child about sex (she'll ignore that he's still a year away from being 13.) She will act like he's a predator or something. Then you'll be embarrassed and upset, she will call the boy's mother, and possibly the other kids' moms.

You don't need this in your life.

So, curtail sexual discussions between children. They don't have the understanding or discretion to talk about it in the proper context. You do, and can discuss it with your own kids, and let the other kids' moms do the discussing with them.

I will say that if I overheard this same 12 year old bringing up sex again after you told him not to, there would be trouble and I wouldn't have him over at my house again... that would mean that he has a fixation on it and it would be a huge red flag to me...

Dawn

I think you did fine to intervene when and as you did. It sounds like the 12 year old listened and stopped, right? But next time you may not be around. And once something's heard, your kid can't unhear it, even if you intervene after the fact.

I think too that you're asking a lot of yourself to be "nurturing an environment where violence is not common and desensitized, and sex is considered normal" when the neighborhood kids are (a) not your own kids, so you can't really control what they see/hear/know/say and (b) kids of widely varying ages who are at extremely different stages of maturity.

While it's great that the older kids are OK playing with the younger ones at times, if they're frequently together, you are going to have the younger "learning" from the older for good or for ill..That's pretty normal in families with siblings of different ages. But in a family the parents can know more of what the kids are saying, control and discipline more, and choose what TV, movies, etc. the kids are exposed to. You can only do that for your own kids. If you .feel your younger kids are possibly going to hear things and do things (like makiing play guns etc.) that you do not want for them, the only intervention you really have is not letting them play with a child so much older or doing even more intervening and monitoring as you did here. Even if the 12-year-old is a great kid, he's six years older than one child and nine years older than the other. If you "know there is some sexy talk that goes on outside my earshot" -- and you don't want that -- why let it continue if you know it's going on? I am not clear if the "sexy talk" is coming from the one boy of 12 or if there is a larger group of kids his age or appreciably older than your kids who are talking like this around your kids.

Folks are probably going to post that the age differences is no big deal, he can be like a big brother etc., but if he or other older kids are, well, just being their ages, they may be saying things you don't want your kids exposed to just yet. It's fine if they all get along, but with such a large age difference, and with your own knowledge that some talk goes on that is too mature for your kids, I would certainly want them monitored, and might seek out more play dates with kids closer to your kids' own ages.

I think this situation would soon sort itself out as the older kids drift away from a neighborhood group and spend more time with friends their own age.

In my house sex is viewed as sacred. We think it is so special that we don't share that topic with just anyone. Older kids are instructed to let the parents share that topic with the younger ones and we don't inform other people's kids about such intimate details.

As for guns. Mine don't shoot at each other, but they do have shooting competitions. Guns are dangerous and all my children have been instructed in how they are to be used and how they are not supposed to be used. I have some pretty good aims in the group! We start them with BB guns and now they are into black powder guns. Keep in mind my husband is a cop so our view of guns may be a bit different than some.

I think you were on the wrong track. You made sex bad, but allowed them to pretend to have guns and shoot each other.

I think you should have maybe listened a bit more to the sex talk to see what information was being relayed. If it was correct information, you should have let it go. The 3 - 5 year olds probably weren't paying much attention and even if they were, they probably didn't understand and even if they did, if the info was correct, then what's the problem. If the info was not correct, you could have told the 12 year old that that info is not correct and encouraged that child to have a conversation with his/her own parents to get the right information.

I think you're doing a great job. In my opinion you chose the right topic to be a "bad guy" with. Cops & Robbers might be a violent game, but most games children play are some variation of power struggle. They just have to work it all out in some way or another.

I think you were right to tell the 12 year old that a conversation about sex w/children younger than him/her was inappropriate. It was also inappropriate for him/her to start a conversation about cops & robbers as it might scare some of the younger kids. I would've stopped that convo as well. Personally, I think that your kids are too young to be hanging around that 12 year old. Why is that 12 yr old is intersted in being around kids so much younger than her/him? IMHO, it's really not appropriate for a 12 yr old to play w/kids that much younger. It's your house & you can say what is or isn't an acceptable topic of conversation to be had around your children.