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Sure, kids will encounter a lot of things, but there’s a difference between coddling and having conversations when the time is right (well, better - there’s rarely a correct time in any exact sense with kids). Our kid is old enough now to have a good grasp on “world war 2 was bad, nazis are bad”, and if they were to hop on this server and then we have discussions surrounding ie the “obsidian swaztikas” mentioned above, I think it would go alright. This kid is also smart, and emotionally aware, and actually a pretty cool dude. They can swear around us, and never in anger towards someone, and tbh they’ve said “oh shit” once while playing a game with us because they got spooked and last night during a run on Marathon they went “hey phatskat, I might use a swear word”. I asked what they wanted to say and why they were hesitant (since they know the rule that it’s ok generally), and they explained that swearing makes the “queasy” lol. A couple minutes later they went “ok, I’m gonna say it. Fuck yeah!” All that is to say, I don’t feel like they’re coddled, and they also aren’t just going to grow up like I did in the Wild West of the 90’s internet. I saw a LOT of things I shouldn’t have, way too soon, and I also grew up in an environment where hiding that from my parents was the safest option. So yeah me and my friends swore and made off color jokes around each other because the adults would get mad, despite us learning a lot of the crude stuff from them and then Something Awful et al. In hiding it, I felt like the harder topics were absolutely not able to be broached with my parents, and looking back on it that sucks. The way my partner and I are approaching it is to be up front and have the conversations we can at the kid’s level in a way that makes sense (eg age six: war bad, age ten: World War Two was a war about…). There’s a middle ground between coddling and bootstraps, and it’s the kind of parenting I want to encourage others to do if they can. |