Navigating Difficult Literature With A Highly Sensitive Child
If you’ve been around for a minute, you know that I committed the sin of beginning our homeschooling career “too early”. I’ve since decided that instead of being ashamed of this lapse in one year of our quiet growing time, I’m going to celebrate the born person I was teaching and understand that my then kindergartner was ready for AO year 1 at the ripe age of 5 years 8 months old. It’s ok, really.
But there have been times when it hasn’t been ok. I’m looking at you, classical booklist.
The first week of formal homeschooling with Ambleside Online year 1, I sat down with my sweet first grader and opened Trial and Triumph: Stories from Church History. I hadn’t done pre-reading of any of the titles and was surprised to read that in the first chapter, Polycarp, was burned for refusing to renounce Christianity. I closed to book as my child burst into tears. Clearly, this was not for us.
If we believe, as Miss Mason says in her 20 principals, that Children Are Born Persons, we have no problem respecting the personhood of our children and opting to help them grow in any way we can.
My child is highly sensitive, especially towards cruelty towards people and animals. She has a compassionate heart and finds books that go into details about death, battle, and injustice difficult to handle.
Since I’ve just described almost every history book ever written, we’ve struggled a bit. Over the last 4 years of homeschooling, I’ve come up with ways to handle difficult themes in literature with my daughter.
Know your child’s sensitivity triggers. The number of times I’ve been told that a certain book doesn’t other another child is too many to count, but it bothers mine and we need to navigate that.
Pre-read everything: Once you know what triggers your child, pre-read through the lens of helping them navigate the story.
Decide if the book can be edited: Some content is necessary to the story while other content really isn’t. If there is an issue with a person being cruel to an animal (The Little Duke), decide if you can paraphrase or edit.
Choose if you’ll read the book at all: We have cut several books from our curriculum and have moved them to later years when she is older and able to handle the content better.
Know when to push through: Is the issue at hand factually accurate? Is it necessary to learn at this time? There are moments when that happens and we need to preserver through the content. Unfortunately, many times history is the story of cruelty towards different groups of people. We have to learn about this so we preservere.
Allow your child to process: When you do need to read through things that may be difficult for your highly sensitive kid, give them time after to process. This may look like allowing them to talk about what they read or countering the story with something positive. For example, if your child struggles with animal cruelty and that was a topic, read another book where there is obvious kindness towards animals.
Slowly build their tolerance: My highly sensitive kids loves The Hobbit and Narnia. While she has a hard time with battles and fighting, she has grown to love the stories of good triumphing over evil. I have learned that she does better with works of fiction over non-fiction. We have, slowly, over 4 years, been reading tales of endurance, bravery, and loyalty. It began with animal stories like the Green Ember and has progressed to Lord of the Rings. This has helped build her tolerance to where we were able to read about Cesar Augustus with little affect.
However you go about it, reading difficult literature with your child comes down to respecting their personhood. As an adult, you make the decisions about what you fill your heart and head with. It’s important to navigate that with the same respect for your children. Understanding when things make your child uncomfortable and respecting that helps continue the love of learning, foster connections, and teaches them to respect themselves mentally.
To be honest, there are very few books out there that can not be substituted, read at a later date, or edited to fit your curriculum if you have to .
Like I said, if you truly believe in Charlotte Mason’s principals, particularly number 1 and number 4, you understand the importance of respecting your born person, rather than pushing them in ways they may not be respectful towards their personhood or personality.
