40k - Thoughts about 40k and introducing kids.

Earlier this morning I noticed a post on Facebook about introducing a child to 40k. The universe is quite nasty and brutal at times as you would expect with a central theme of warfare and sci-fi.

I posted about a personal experience I had with my youngest niece. I'll paste my comment below:

"One important thing for when she gets a bit older is to try to "kiddify" some of the more mature stuff. Back in 5th edition my youngest niece (who is a giant fantasy fan of LotR and HP) picked up my shiny new Grey Knights codex which I had just bought and left on the side when I got home.

Straight away she is sat. Ext to me asking about who the guys with the horns are in the art and why the good Knights are killing them. Then came the question :

"What's an exorcism?"

So there I am having to explain what a Daemon is (it's a bad thing created by a person's thoughts in this game) and an exorcism (is them getting rid of the daemons by a ritual). Which satisfied her curiosity and didn't go too far down the rabbit hole.

The problem came when the next Monday at school to answer the question "what did you do this weekend?" She wrote down that she had learnt about daemons and exorcisms from her uncle...

I ended up being called into the school to talk to her teacher who tried to scold me for telling her about it.
"My niece is a smart girl" I replied, "she can use Google better then her mother... imagine what she would have found if she had typed 'exorcism' into the search engine. By me telling her the cliff note version I saved a lot of problems so why wouldn't I explain it to her?"

The point is that kids are smarter then we think and given some of the bits of fluff which will be uncovered by inquisitor little ones, don't shy away from a basic version, as they will understand and you can head off problems which may come in the future".

I stand by this advice as imagine a seven year old (as she was at the time) googling "The Exorcist" movie or getting some historical references, if I hadn't tried to explain things simply...

Likewise she asked about the Blood Angels when they were released in 5th as well. "Well they are Angels who fight to defend normal people against everytbing, blood is part of their theme and to represent the blood they defend".
I decided to avoid the whole vampire, psychic backlash, etc.
Which she understands now she is older.

As I said on FB, children are far smarter then we give them credit for, they will understand and ask questions.

I look forward to when my son asks about my hobby, if he does great, if he isn't interested (like at the minute) then that's fine as well.

Until next time...

 - Lewis