Here's an article from a mother who finds the book Pinkalicious sufficiently threatening to require bowdlerizing. Seriously.
Her Pinkalicious problems come from raising her child in a Groupthink culture: he's completely unprepared for the idea that there are multiple valid opinions on some things. There's "right" and there's "wrong," and her son needs protection against the presentation of the "brussels sprouts are yucky" theory because he might embrace it as the new "right." A normal parent would say, "Some people don't like brussels sprouts, like how you don't like [Food X]; isn't it funny how, if you were in the protagonist's position, you'd think it was a tasty treat? Some people thing that when they get to eat [Food X]." But then no parent writing in today's New York Times can be accused of being "normal."
Her Harry Potter problems are something else entirely, a weird combination of giving her son everything and giving him nothing at all. We have also recognized that our children are too young to read scenes of torture, so--here's the totally weird part--we don't read those books to them. Why can't she say "no"? As in, "No, you can't read that book yet." It's not like kid culture is building up an irresistible urge; the seventh Harry Potter book has been out for over six years and the movies have been out since 2011. The moment of "I've got to read this book by Monday or I'll be a square" has long since passed.
But for some reason her son can't be denied something. And so what he gets is not the thing at all. Recognizing that her son is too young for the things she won't keep from him, she changes the thing instead. When her son is ready to learn about true evil in the world, the fact that it doesn't always leave you alone just because you're fairly young and pleasant, and that it must be confronted instead of ignored, there will be no story to help teach it because Harry Potter has been turned into tales of magical whimsy and little else.
This is like when modern adults recognize teenagers can't handle long-term, stable, deeply-committed relationships, but they also want to have sex, so the adults change sex to a recreational pursuit. Then should the teenagers ever become prepared for a deeply-committed relationship (which isn't a given anymore, but still), there's nothing left for them to use as an expression of it.
In creating a world without sharp corners, the kids are left unprepared for the real sharp corners that can't be removed. Thus sometimes the best protection against sharp corners isn't removing them, but keeping them away until the kid is better prepared to address them.
via oneofthebest
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