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by jacobgkau 205 days ago
I'd be more interested in where your 7-year-old even learned phrases like "I feel like I shouldn't be on Earth anymore."
7 comments

Yes, us too. Beats us. Sure wasn't around our house, and we can't imagine any family/friends/TV/whatever he may have learned it from.
It sounds to me how a someone would describe feeling suicidal when they don't know the word for it.
Ya, when I'm sad I can come up with pretty creative language to express it. It does feel really tough to know that a seven year old feels like that :(
7 year olds are second graders in school. They are exposed to plenty.
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All this comment points out it’s you aren’t very familiar with second grades curriculums.
For me it shows he's trying to shoehorn in right wing talking points into this situation.
With both my kids in 2nd grade and my wife also a public 2nd grade teacher, I consider myself pretty aware of what kids are being taught these days. They certainly are being gradually introduced to some of the problems of the world, but I think childhood development experts would all agree that's healthy. As for them being told they're the source or victim that's hardly the case. I'm sure there are a few isolated incidents that right-wing media love to bang on about, but not the experience for most.
> but I think childhood development experts would all agree that's healthy.

Could it be that we think it's healthy because we can just give meds to the kids that it affects?

How would someone even have the ability to say "it's healthy" - I'm struggling to think how it comes about. I think it's healthy for my kids to cry about a worm dying in the garden, but anything less than "anxiety about a dying planet"...

Put it another way: climate change messaging IS totally about anxiety and putting human as the cause, so we can (as adults) change our habits and save the planet. Could it be too much for kids though?

I grew up in the 80s and 90s. In school environmentalism was a big deal. We did conservation trips to these ecology parks, we were taught to recycle, and often watched films about animals that might die off due to climate change.

I only felt motivated to annoy my parents to recycle more. Since the effects were not directly in front of me a strong emotional reaction didn't occur.

Perhaps there are children who already have anxiety and latch onto climate change and other problems.

At what age will you permit your kids to leave the walled garden you've created for them?
I don't give them a walled garden. I let them experience life how they do, and i protect them from predators until they can defend for themselves.

(so in this particular situation, maybe highschool / early adult)

Issues like what? Civilization? Ending slavery? Those aren't teachings, they are genocidal lies.
Not sure about you but I didn’t learn my native language phrase by phrase only. You learn the individual parts and concepts and construct sentences from that.
He learned it from being on Earth? And noticing that some people who used to be on Earth aren’t anymore? And it dawning on him that he doesn’t have to be either?
I’m with you on this. Granted my oldest is only 5, but anything profound my kids say can be traced back to something they heard
Teachers / schools / mandatory privilege education
You seem to have a pretty narrow view of the world, especially about “privilege education.” FWIW I’ve never once heard anything about “white people bad” from my kiddo, about 10.

It’s also impossible to to talk about idk Columbus, slavery, Great Britain, or the founding of America (and like ya know, the treatment of native Americans) without ascribing some blame to the people responsible…who were by and large “white”. We also talk about how any judgement based on skin, appearance, gender, ethnicity, or religion, is flat out wrong.

Come on, 7 year olds should have already learned to form phrases.
No, you see, this phrase must have appeared in his training set.