Visit the Knights for Life website where you will find a suggested curriculum for all children beginning at Pre-Kindergarten.
If the thread was hijacked, it was by those that decided to advocate and, indeed, encourage, the practice of using the graphic images in areas accessible to small children. I think you could easily find the break point at about #27.
I have looked over the curriculum you linked. Honestly, doesn’t sound a great deal different in terms of information than what I have been doing with my child since she was very young. She has had since she was 4 a couple of books that show drawings and photos of fetal development and loves looking at them over and over. She knows babies come from human eggs and sperm and where each of those come from, though I think she is still a bit fuzzy on the specific mechanics of the sex act (she’s just turned 7, I’m fine with that for now).
She knows that one doesn’t have to be married to have a baby, but that it is much better for everyone if you are, that moms have to be careful what they eat and drink and do to protect the babies before they are born and that sometimes babies come early as well as the challenges they face.
She has been learning for years about the inherent worth and dignity of every person, including those who are different or who have disabilities. I worked for 16 years with people of all ages with developmental disabilities and she has a friend close to her age with Asperger’s Syndrome as well as knowing adults who have various disabilities. She knows that they have gifts to contribute to society just like everyone else, as do the elderly people we have visited in nursing homes and in our family. She knows people of various races, including mixed race families, we live in an integrated neighborhood, have mixed race marriages within our extended familiy and we learn about other cultures, religions, etc, so she sees the value in people who look and believe differently than we do.
We have talked often of the importance and sacredness of life within our religious framework and our responsibilities to care for and respect all living things. She understands the roles and responsibilities of parents to love and care for their children and . knows about adoption and knows families built through adoption (including her father’s).
She knows that there are people out there who will hurt children and that that is why I don’t let her run around unsupervised in public places. We have books on stranger danger and safety and will be having a visit from the sheriff’s dept for a program on that soon at her homeschool group. She has, unfortunately, heard mention of the war and the people hurt by that as well as through disease, crime, etc and she has attended funerals and receivings so she knows that people die and that people hurt other people, sometimes including children. She knows that we moved out of our old house when she was 4 because it wasn’t safe for her due to rising crime and violence and drugs in the area.
Based on the reading, looks like we have pretty much covered the same information as this curriculum does up to the fifth grade, in addition to letting her know there is a less than wonderful side of life. Considering she is about to start second grade, I don’t see that we are particularly “oversheltering” her by not adding in specific detailed information on abortion at this stage. Even the Catholic pro-life curriculum doesn’t address abortion until the
6th grade, when the children are around 11-12 years old. There is a vast world of difference in the maturity and reasoning level of an 11 year old and a 5 year old.
p. 104 “Abortion is mentioned for first time in sixth grade.”
So, RichT, in your opinion, what else do I need to add to “plant the seeds”?
My stance has never been that my child should not be exposed to abortion “at all” as in “never in her lifetime”. It has been that I don’t see any value in exposing her to it in any form, much less through graphic photos of dead babies, as a preschooler or early elementary student. We will cover things like abortion, the Holocaust, child abuse, exploitation, sexual assault, the mechanics of sex, etc when she is a bit older.
This seems in line with what I can see of the couple of kindergarten curricula descriptions of Catholic schools that I have found since my earlier post. I continue to be amazed that there are folks here who are castigating me and accusing me of all sorts of things simply because I, apparently like most Catholics who presumably are sending their kids to Catholic school to get an education that covers those things Catholics deem important in the way that the Church deems most beneficial, don’t choose to introduce the specific topic of abortion to a young child.
If you think that no one is advocating children seeing these sorts of images and that such exposure is actively “good for them,” re-read this thread.