Censorship>

So on a message board I frequent - someone posted the following:

So, I was having a conversation yesterday afternoon with my friend in Texas. I do love her dearly, but we have very, very different parenting styles and thoughts on what kids need, so we're careful about what we discuss. We both love books, so we talk about them a lot. I mentioned that Cameron really likes the "Little Critter" books by Mercer Meyer. Her response was that she "wasn't into books where animals dress up in clothes and act like people".Umm, what? I sort of laughed because I never really thought about it. They're cute books and they usually have
moral or lesson, and my kid likes them. The only books I've decided to forego at this point are the Grimm's fairy tales. Hansel and Gretel was my favorite story growing up, but that and the other stories in the book are very, very dark so I've decided to just put the book aside for now.

Then another poster said:

As a former school teacher, my opinion will always be ... no censorship. We have come across a not so nice word before in library books and we always talk about how those are not nice words. She hears them anyways since we play with older kids, so she might as well know they're not nice and mommy doesn't allow her to say them. I know she's young to grasp the concept, but I'm starting now.

My take -
I agree with 2nd poster to a point - well, I thought I did. But the more I think about it - I do agree with some censoring. I think that when you keep exposing kids to any language, they can get "desensitized" to it. My kids spend their kindergarten year in a French classroom. The kindergarten year is a "linguistic" bath. The kids learn the language by hearing it again and again and again. I prefer my kids not to experience the American a linguistic bath of swear/certain slang words. So I choose not to keep exposing my kids to it during a wonderful story time, "unless" it is integral to the storyline. My kids know the words and we have had discussions about our "family's rules" with respects to certain words; however, when a "bad" word comes up, I generally will change it.

That said, I do not enjoy the Junie B Jones books, she is just not a very nice girl and the amount of times the words stupid & dumb show up - it is like watching a movie that you can't get over how many times the F-Bomb has been dropped to know what the movie is about. They are not enjoyable for either H or I to read to the kids, so we don't pull those to the front of our home library; however, we do have a few and if they really want to read them, we will read with the censoring.