Thursday, March 31, 2011

Overprotective much?

Yep, we're still here. As usual, I have mentally prepared posts long before I have the inclination or time to type them up.

One thing that Mike and I have been talking about lately is whether we have been too overprotective of Ally. She is our first baby, and of course, you are always learning the ropes with the first. We fully admit we have sheltered her, but I just wonder if it has been too much. For instance, when we read fairy tales like "Snow White", I omit the part where the huntsman is to kill Snow White. Ally has such a fragile grasp on what death is (though she understands a little more after my grandfather & aunt passed away last year) that I didn't want to explain why someone would want to murder another person. Was I wrong to do that?

With regards to tv, Ally watches mostly PBS with the occasional Mickey Mouse or Dora thrown in (more for Kelly). Oh, but her new fave is "Jake & the Neverland Pirates"--anyone else watching that? Anyway, it is mostly educational stuff. However, we remember watching the Bugs Bunny cartoons with all the violence! But my SIL supposedly lets her kid, who was 4 or 5 at the time, watch True Blood. WTH? I still maintain that is way off base, but I wonder what other kids her age are watching.

At this point, I think Ally is overly sensitive like me. She was scared of the villain in the Care Bears movie, and wanted me to sit next to her. Needless to say, when they watched "The Lion King" at school, she was terrified! I don't know if she is innately sensitive, or if it is because she hasn't been exposed to those kinds of things.

A few months ago, Ally started asking all kinds of questions at night. These questions were out of nowhere! She asked "What if someone broke in and took all our toys?" and the one that broke my heart was "What if someone came in and stole my sister?"!!!!!!!!!! We don't let her watch the news, because of scary stories like that. Mike & I both have OCD tendencies, so I don't want her to be afraid of the world. But hearing her ask those questions made me wonder if she was already anxious about the world. Thankfully, Ally seemed to trust me when I said they were safe and stopped asking those heartbreaking questions.

We do discuss "stranger danger" and that there are "mean" people who can hurt you. We don't want her to be completely naive, but where is the line???? What do you all think?

1 comment:

Kelsey said...

I think you have to follow your instincts about what your kids can handle - I'm also cautious about what our kids watch/hear but Harper seems to have a pretty thick skin for pretend scary things (i.e. Disney movie villans).

When discussing real-life dangers I use a seat belt analogy to put it in perspective. We ALWAYS wear our seat belts, just in case, but we don't get into an accident every time we drive our car - it is just an extra step to keep us safe. So learning to be cautious w/ strangers is kind of like another seat belt - probably most people you meet won't wish you harm but you need to know ways to keep yourself safe just in case. This has worked often with Harper...