If there’s anywhere for your 3-year-old finally to learn about such things, why not in the Book of Mormon, where he can see that things like family and beliefs are worth fighting for?

Michelle – I agree that things are worth fighting for, but I really think the level of gore and violence is a bit much for a 3 year old to comprehend. I like Sam’s approach. Just gloss over the nitty gritty and focus on spiritual segments.

See, it’s stories like that that make me really miss primary.

Our 1.5 year old daughter (at the time) loved the animated story book that talked about Nephi going to go back and get the plates, etc. There was a page where Nephi and Sam are getting beaten by Lam/Lem and an Angel appears and commands them to stop. The picture showed Laman with a stick in his hand that he was beating Nephi on the head with.

It was a tiny bit sad, but mostly hilarious the day that we saw our daughter pick up a stick from the yard and bonk her self on the head with it saying “hit stick on head like Laman”. At least shed didn’t do it to someone else…

We sorta glossed over the hole Nephi/beheading incident.

Do what you like, but I would suggest instead of a policy of “no violence no way” you just try to slightly work around it (don’t ignore it just soften or lessen the focus on it) while emphasizing its negativeness (but not in an overbearing way).

aw come on. Violence is part of almost every children’s fairy tale.

4. BTD Greg – well I enjoyed your story. It was a classic. I can’t wait to teach my Primary class (same age as yours) this lesson this Sunday.

6. jjohnsen – not sure that will do it for me…

7. samMon that is kind of funny and kind of not I suppose… I like your suggestion

8. BrianJ – Fair point and very valid – hmm, guess I will have to introduce it in some form then.

9. Bookslinger – not the ones we read

DKL – now that is an interesting approach – I like the “tell them what you believe are fables”. Unfortunately that negates 90% of the Old Testament and a chunk of the BoM. I think that helping kids see practicality is a good idea. thanks,

Thanks, Sam.

Devyn, as DKL’s response (#15) to Sam (#14) indicates, DKL is not being serious, but in fact bitingly sarcastic (wow, that like NEVER has happened before!) Though I do just about believe he makes his children read Shakespeare before the scriptures.

I think we need to be careful with violence, but I do not think it is necessary, or even healthy, to try to eliminate all discussions of violence, especially in boys. They need to have modeled for them appropriate uses for aggression. (And yes, there are such cases, in the scriptures and elsewhere.)

Another thing to understand is that children have very black-and-white moral systems until their tweens/early teens. So we should worry about depictions of nihilistic, senseless violence, but violence that restores justice and rights a moral order can be reassuring and comforting to children.

I know his name is mud in many quarters, but I really like Bruno Bettleheim’s The Uses of Enchantment. He notes that most fairy tales, beloved by children for hundreds of years, are actually quite violent. But Bettleheim notes that children are often subject to brutality, but seldom death for their poor choices. Adults really get what’s coming to them, however.

Bettleheim says the Disney-ified santizing of fairy tales (the Little Mermaid, in the original, turns into sea foam for disobeying her parents, and Cinderella’s sisters have their eyes pecked out by birds and cut off their toes to fit the slippers in that original) actually does a disservice to children, who encounter the world as a scary, frightening, dangerous place. They need models to help them navigate these dangers and contemplate consequences of actions, but at a safe (fictional) remove from their actual lives. Removing the brutality and violence makes these fairy tales less salient. They don’t resonate with the actual fears of children as well.

All fairy tales restore the moral order. Children have a strong sense of justice. They need to know that, as Wordsworth said, “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail,” even if that failure and prevailing are violent. We should not take that from them.

I believe that psychosocial development mirrors, to some degree, the way the Law was given to the dispensations by Heavenly Father. First is the retributive, strict moral model of the law of Moses. Then came the inward-focused, motive- and motivationally-focused law of love and forgiveness. I believe children can only properly understand love, mercy and forgiveness if they FIRST understand justice. We cannot short-circuit that process. Some of that teaching may include violence. What is important is context. The violence should be about bad guys getting theirs and good guys winning; senseless, nihilistic depictions of evil (like Resevoir Dogs, or many others) are to be avoided at all costs.

Those depictions can also indicate the waste and cost and consquences of violence (something Hollywood doesn’t do well at all; people are shot as if they’re getting their nails clipped). I am always struck that when the Nephites win their war against the Lamanites in Alma, they mourn and are sorrowful that it came to this, because of their wickedness. In this time, in our country (and just about every other one I can think of), we have parades. How wrong is that?

“Bettleheim says the Disney-ified santizing of fairy tales…. Removing the brutality and violence makes these fairy tales less salient. They don’t resonate with the actual fears of children as well.”

Not to get too off-topic, but from that quote I don’t think Bettleheim knows much about kids. At least, Disney movies often resonate closely to my daughters’ fears: being worked too hard (Cinderella), being misunderstood (Beauty & Beast), and so on. Other very real fears are addressed in non-Disney stories that I assume Bettleheim also disparages (e.g., Barbie remakes of Rapunzel or Swan Lake, Pixar movies, etc.). I don’t see how having the stepsisters’ eyes pecked out would add any value at all—from the point of view of my daughters.

(Now, I’ll admit that I detest the Little Mermaid ’cause a) it’s about a sixteen year old girl running off and getting married, and b) selfish little Ariel endangers the whole ocean and suffers no consequence.)

According to the book’s index, Bettleheim discusses Walt Disney twice in his book. The first, about Snow White:

Giving each dwarf a separate name and a distinctive personality–in the [original] fairy tale they are all identical–as in the Walt Disney film, seriously interferes with the unconscious understanding that they symbolize an immature pre-individual form of existence which Snow White [in her maturation process] must transcend. Such ill-considered additions to fairy tales, which seemingly increase the human interest, actually are apt to destroy it because they make it difficult to grasp the story’s deeper meaning correctly. (p.210)

The second, about Cinderella:

Perrault’s story and those directly based on it depict the heroine quite differently from all other versions. Perrault’s Cinderella is sugar-sweet and insipidly good, and she completely lacks initiative (which probably accounts for Disney’s choosing Perrault’s version…) Most other Cinderellas are much more of a person. (p.251)

Here he is on violence:

A young child, for example, not only loves his parents with an incredible intensity of feeling, but at times also hates them. With this knowledge, it should have been easy to recognize that fairy tales speak to the inner mental life of the child. But instead, doubters claimed that these stories create or at least greatly encourage these upsetting feelings.
Those who outlawed traditional folk fairy tales decided that if there were monsters in a story told to children, these must all be friendly–but they missed the monster a child knows best and is most concerned with: the monster he feels or fears himself to be, and which also sometimes persecutes him. By keeping this monster within the child unspoken of, hidden in his unconscious, adults prevent the child from spinning fantasies… Without such fantasies, the child fails to get to know his monster better, nor is he given suggestions as to how he may gain mastery over it. As a result, the child remains helpless with his worst anxieties–much more so than if he had been told fairy tales which give these anxieties form and body and also show ways to overcome these monsters.

Obviously, much of this analysis may not apply to scriptures, which most of us accept as real, rather than fairy tales, which, according to Bettleheim, have value precisely because everybody, even children, knows they occur only in fairyland. I’m not as strident or psychoanalytic in my views as Bettleheim, but I do think we need to understand that childrens’ minds are naturally prone to violence. We do not want to either encourage or deny these impulses, but instead teach children to channel them and confront them, in a way they feel safe. The idea is to prepare children to become moral creatures in a fallen world, not merely to shelter them from it and postpone the reckoning as long as possible. Bettleheim believes that fairyland is a safe place to explore these ideas. I tend to agree, but also add that placing a moral framework around violence, which includes concepts of good and evil, the consequences of violence, the wages of sin, and the need for justice, and the need to fight for what is right. That is just the kind of framework around violence that (arguably) we can find (or at least teach) in the scriptures. Obviously, my suggestions here still don’t deal with some of the conundrums the scriptures will present, particularly the Old Testament. What to do with Tamar, Rahab, or Jepthah? To say nothing of the Song of Solomon… But compared to these, the story in Acts of Ananias and Sapphira for example, can be easily dealt with within the framework I suggest.

Why bother with the prose of Shakespeare when you can scare your kids silly with classic films? I say start them out with “Alien” and “Kujo” and work your way down the violence chain… The wars in the BOM will seem tame in comparison!

I know you’re joking PftPP, but my wife and I were appalled when we saw a couple come out of Saw IV with a two year old. Some celebrity was telling a funny story on Letterman about how her 5 year old was watching a movie (was it the Shinging), but now I can’t remember who. I saw it on YouTube though.

BrianJ, I don’t think we disagree either. But I would love to hear how you would read Judges 19 with your children. Here the opacity of the KJV will be your friend, but it’s still tough stuff.

I am not an advocate for young children viewing violent entertainment. From what I have read on the subject, a child processes the violent act in a better way, IF bad people are the ones doing a bad thing such as killing. Children understand that bad people do bad things. It freaks out a young child’s sense of morals if they hear about good people doing really bad things. This is the problem I have with teaching young children about Nephi and Laban or Ammon and the sheep and the thieves etc…These stories are the stuff nightmares are made of, because it is the good guys who are killing. The concept of killing for God is hard enough for most of us adults to wrap our brains around this concept let alone children. Many scriptures are not children’s stories, but adult scriptures for us to interpret.

When I have taught Primary ( I have done so on and off for 22 years) I have skipped parts in the lessons that talk about good guys behaving violently. I have not appreciated other Primary teachers teaching my Jr Primary boys about Laban and Nephi, Ammon etc… After hearing these stories all three of my boys played much more violently for several days after. Personally I did not need that. The good news is that SO FAR my boys have NOT turned out to be the sort of boys that teachers declare in the staff room, ” So-and-So is going to hell by way of the state pen”. SO I guess that they were not permantly damaged.

#27 JA Benson – That is interesting – I found your case interesting.

#28 SPB – That sounds familiar – I believe you have a very cute 3 1/2 year old too! Have you tried “Jesus the Christ?” A little easy reading… Seriously, that is a good question.