John Smith wrote on Oct 21
st, 2016 at 7:41pm:
My question, does anyone think it's appropriate that schools discuss murder cases with 7 year olds? Or can anyone think of a good reason why a 7 year old even needs to know about it?
Somehow, I don't think that this really happened. But it does raise a point about appropriateness if it is true. When I was 10 years old, I was exposed to this silly M-rated movie called "Critters 2". In today's horror terms, I thought the movie was quite tame. But, as a 10-year-old, I was horrified by the explicit violence of people getting killed by alien creatures at apparent random.
To the extent that I was frightened of the likelihood that something horrific would happen to myself and family. It took a good 2 years to overcome the post-traumatic stress effects. I suppose, in a way, it was good that I was exposed to some kind of horror. It helped in maturing me to the horrors that I could face in, what was then, my future.
I'm in two minds about this. Since being exposed to a real situation is different to entertainment media, you would need to treat this seriously with some considerable damage control. I agree that you would need to raise this with the school about age appropriateness of a murder detail. The next thing you need to talk about is to raise the issue with the child about what happened, without going too far into detail. Tell him what he wants to know. He won't ask too much information at his age. After some time, if he still has doubts about his place in the world, you may need to encourage him to "get over it" in some way.