I know I have spoken before about the fact that a human’s brain is not fully developed until age seven and before that time the left and right halves of the brain are separated (the corpus callosum is not fully developed) and because of this, very fundamental understanding of right and wrong, good and bad are not altogether there.
I am afraid to admit that I get most of this kind of info from my trusted, well read, RIE teacher. She says for a fuller understanding of this concept you should read:
Parenting From The Inside Out
and
The Developing Person Through The Life Span
We have lived and believed this for a long time, but it was not until the other day did Luke show us in his own words how true it is and why I am so happy we do not have any excessive media in our household and the school he is starting next year has a no media policy, here is what happened.
While on vacation Luke watched Fantastic Mr Fox. He watched a little bit before supper and was then telling us how his eyes were glued to it and he could not take his eyeballs away from the screen. We allowed him to finish watching it after supper.
Then the next night he last told us before bedtime about how he was a bit scared to go to sleep because the version of Mr Fox in his dreams was scarier than the version he saw on the TV. That he was ok watching the version of TV, but watching the version in his dreams was upsetting to him too much.
It was a relatively safe, good wake up call for Mom and Dad, and secretly I have been wanting to watch Mr Fox for a long time, no bad dreams for me though!
