News Buffer

Most of today's front page or TV lead story news coverage is not appropriate for 5-10 year olds to read, hear on the radio or watch on TV. News organizations are in the business of grabbing and keeping adult viewers. In this day and age that means they've allowed coverage to get pretty gritty. As adults, we can choose to allow these experiences into our world - subjecting ourselves to the graphic details of the gruesome or hideous aberrations of a few sick humans. But, do you really want to have your kids bombarded with the worst that humans have to offer? In their inexperience, kids have not yet developed rationalizations to help buffer their fragile emotions to the horror laid bare in these news images. The reality of today's media strategies makes it inevitable that news networks will certainly continue to broadcast outrageously shocking material. It is unlikely that it will get better - Because that's the news!

This is not depriving them of the real world they should know about. The news often distorts our sense of our world because so much of it is biased toward the sensational. You can chose to let them know what you feel appropriate for them, knowing their age, their sensitivities and their reasoning abilities. As children grow older they are more ready to accept an increasingly balanced - good and bad - image of life. There is no need to rush them for it will come all in good time.