News (Media Awareness Project) - Australia: That Chat About The Facts Of Life No Longer Means |
| Title: | Australia: That Chat About The Facts Of Life No Longer Means |
| Published On: | 2001-02-05 |
| Source: | Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) |
| Fetched On: | 2008-01-27 00:58:51 |
THAT CHAT ABOUT THE FACTS OF LIFE NO LONGER MEANS THE BIRDS AND BEES
This generation of kids is the drug generation. It's the first adult issue
they learn about, the one they may try before anything else, writes Sally
Loane.
Like most 8-year-olds in those gorgeous, gangly years that separate
childhood and adolescence, my son is soaking up knowledge and information
at a rate equalled only by his appetite for food.
The radio, in the car and the house (on 702 ABC Sydney naturally), is no
longer background noise to be tolerated as he plays with a toy or a game,
or to be turned off as fast as possible so he can listen to a Harry Potter
tape. It is the source of an endless stream of information, news and
current affairs, and more often than not, he now listens with intense
concentration. And most particularly when there's news about children.
Stories about schools, children lost on a trip, the death or injury of a
child require an immediate explanation. Why did that happen? Why didn't
grown-ups stop it happening? Why would anyone do that to a kid?
This emergent fascination with the wider world has prompted me to listen to
the news with a different ear, that of a parent and not a journalist. I'm
doing something I never thought I'd do - turning the sound down whenever
there's sad or bad news about children.
The death of a young person from drugs, violence, a car accident or
parental abuse has me reaching for the volume control - a futile attempt, I
know - to shield my own children from the evils of the adult world, to stop
them knowing too much and growing up too fast.
And the issue that has generated most questions from the back of the car?
Drugs. What are they, mum? Why do people take them? How can they be bad for
you when the doctor gives them to you? Why is that person lying down in the
street? Why do robbers need money?
This generation of kids is the drug generation. It's the first adult issue
they learn about, the one they hear constantly on the news, the first one
they ask questions about, the one they may try before anything else.
There's nowhere to hide.
The drug culture is in their faces everyday. News bulletins are saturated
with stories of overdose deaths, injecting rooms and drug-related crimes.
It permeates our court news. Children witness junkies preparing their
heroin and shooting up in city streets and in the doorways of houses.
Parents have to give the drugs talk long before the sex talk, which, for my
parents' generation, went by the quaint moniker of the facts of life.
Drugs are the facts of life now, not sex. Just as our parents worried about
their children experimenting with sex and warned of its consequences, we
have to work out how to properly warn them about drugs. And which method of
explanation is right - the fear-of-God lecture (for which I have a natural
inclination), or the more relaxed approach?
The other thing that prompts a flurry of questions from children beginning
to notice the wider world is violence on TV.
The nightly news is saturated with it, and stuff we adults are inured to:
soccer crowds going berserk, road accidents, war carnage. It horrifies kids.
At the risk of sounding as though I've got a touch of the Brian Harradines,
I instinctively reach for the TV controls to channel surf away from it.
I am shocked at how sanguine, or just plain stupid, some parents can be
about this. Like the couple who took their three children aged between
about five and 10 to the recent Harrison Ford-Michelle Pfeiffer thriller,
What Lies Beneath, a kind of watery Fatal Attraction. I spent half the
movie with my eyes shut, as the screen filled with images of rotting
drowned bodies, ghosts, Ford murdering one woman and then attempting to
kill Pfeiffer, car accidents and graphic drownings.
A stupid, violent and very scary movie which had me checking behind the
door when I got home. I can only wonder at the effect on the three little
ones sitting beside me who were glued to the screen for the entire movie.
In the final scene (featuring a rotting, drowned body) they all piped up
with loud questions for their parents. I had one too. What sort of idiots
would subject small children to nasty rubbish like that?
This generation of kids is the drug generation. It's the first adult issue
they learn about, the one they may try before anything else, writes Sally
Loane.
Like most 8-year-olds in those gorgeous, gangly years that separate
childhood and adolescence, my son is soaking up knowledge and information
at a rate equalled only by his appetite for food.
The radio, in the car and the house (on 702 ABC Sydney naturally), is no
longer background noise to be tolerated as he plays with a toy or a game,
or to be turned off as fast as possible so he can listen to a Harry Potter
tape. It is the source of an endless stream of information, news and
current affairs, and more often than not, he now listens with intense
concentration. And most particularly when there's news about children.
Stories about schools, children lost on a trip, the death or injury of a
child require an immediate explanation. Why did that happen? Why didn't
grown-ups stop it happening? Why would anyone do that to a kid?
This emergent fascination with the wider world has prompted me to listen to
the news with a different ear, that of a parent and not a journalist. I'm
doing something I never thought I'd do - turning the sound down whenever
there's sad or bad news about children.
The death of a young person from drugs, violence, a car accident or
parental abuse has me reaching for the volume control - a futile attempt, I
know - to shield my own children from the evils of the adult world, to stop
them knowing too much and growing up too fast.
And the issue that has generated most questions from the back of the car?
Drugs. What are they, mum? Why do people take them? How can they be bad for
you when the doctor gives them to you? Why is that person lying down in the
street? Why do robbers need money?
This generation of kids is the drug generation. It's the first adult issue
they learn about, the one they hear constantly on the news, the first one
they ask questions about, the one they may try before anything else.
There's nowhere to hide.
The drug culture is in their faces everyday. News bulletins are saturated
with stories of overdose deaths, injecting rooms and drug-related crimes.
It permeates our court news. Children witness junkies preparing their
heroin and shooting up in city streets and in the doorways of houses.
Parents have to give the drugs talk long before the sex talk, which, for my
parents' generation, went by the quaint moniker of the facts of life.
Drugs are the facts of life now, not sex. Just as our parents worried about
their children experimenting with sex and warned of its consequences, we
have to work out how to properly warn them about drugs. And which method of
explanation is right - the fear-of-God lecture (for which I have a natural
inclination), or the more relaxed approach?
The other thing that prompts a flurry of questions from children beginning
to notice the wider world is violence on TV.
The nightly news is saturated with it, and stuff we adults are inured to:
soccer crowds going berserk, road accidents, war carnage. It horrifies kids.
At the risk of sounding as though I've got a touch of the Brian Harradines,
I instinctively reach for the TV controls to channel surf away from it.
I am shocked at how sanguine, or just plain stupid, some parents can be
about this. Like the couple who took their three children aged between
about five and 10 to the recent Harrison Ford-Michelle Pfeiffer thriller,
What Lies Beneath, a kind of watery Fatal Attraction. I spent half the
movie with my eyes shut, as the screen filled with images of rotting
drowned bodies, ghosts, Ford murdering one woman and then attempting to
kill Pfeiffer, car accidents and graphic drownings.
A stupid, violent and very scary movie which had me checking behind the
door when I got home. I can only wonder at the effect on the three little
ones sitting beside me who were glued to the screen for the entire movie.
In the final scene (featuring a rotting, drowned body) they all piped up
with loud questions for their parents. I had one too. What sort of idiots
would subject small children to nasty rubbish like that?
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