When I was a little tyke, I was already a news junkie. I have vivid memories of being allowed to walk the several blocks by myself to get the newspaper at Cappy's in Co-op City in the Bronx. Just the smell of newsprint off a cold newspaper in winter brings back memories. My mother still brags that I was reading the New York Times when I was 5.

Well, my oldest girl just turned 6 and I don't want her to have anything to do with the news. Was the world so peaceful back then (can you say Vietnam?) that it wouldn't warp my mind to read about all the hate and craziness going on in the world? I still remember (I really do) asking my dad what a P.O.W. was when I saw it on a bumper sticker on the Lower East Side. Inflation, boycotts, Watergate, the Yom Kippur War - I absorbed it like a sponge, even if I didn't quite understand what was really going on.

Is it right to keep my child from world events? Sure they'll get to this stuff in school eventually, but since I get all my news from the internet, the TV evening news isn't on at all so she doesn't even get that stuff in passing. Also, in suburban America, even newspapers aren't really prominently displayed anywhere.

Reading in general isn't the issue, in fact she is assigned homework to read at least 10 minutes every night, which she does very well. Also, I could only wish to have had such well-stocked libraries and Barnes & Nobles when I was a kid.

Will she be less interested, less smart or less aware of everything around her in general without all the attention to world events that I got as a kid? I just don't know. but I hope not.

When will I tell her that daddy saw the worst tragedy in American history with his own eyes? Or that anything like that could even happen? We'll tackle the Holocaust in sixth or seventh grade according to her teachers, so I've got a ways to go there yet.