D-Day Beaches/WWII for young kids

Hi Dina, I don't know if you remember but we buzzed over to Normandy from Burgundy for a WWII guided trip in July. I'd recommend this one with the kids. We went with a one-day Overlord Tour. No blood 'n guts but a lot of terrain peppered with solid info. There was a lot to climb on, into, over, just what would keep the kids engaged. The stories told, battles narrated were backed up with a lot of visuals. Julian who was the guide for this particular tour this day, is a Brit with a strong accent. He drops the final consonants in his words, but he has such energy that all was forgiven. If you want more info, just send me a pm. Bets

(Disclaimer: I'm not a parent =) I don't remember anything overly graphic in the Caen museum. In fact, when we were there, there was a field trip of young high schoolers (14-15 years old).
I'm pretty sensitive to violent images, and I don't remember anything sticking out in my mind. They might provide child care simply because it is a serious, pretty intense experience and it gives the kids something to do while the adult parents visit the museum, but I'm not sure. It is a great museum though and I would definitely recommend it. We did the tour and museum package and I thought the tour was great. Any of the beach sites are fine of course. The underwater wreck museum outside of Bayeux was kind of cool. To be safe, I guess I would avoid any movies in any museum.

How were you able to screen out graphic pictures at a museum? At what age will it be OK for them to see the entire museum display? Just curious because this issue will come up soon for my family.

Thanks for all the replies. The comment about the guides being intense because of their interest was something I had wondered about. I wish there was a "Normandy Beaches for Dummies" tour guide available! (My husband is the only one in the family with real interest in WWII, but the kids and I haven't been exposed to it much.) We've been trying to get a copy of "The Longest Day" to help prepare the kids and hopefully will have it before we go. @Richard - In several WWI museums in France there are the old "Stereoscope" picture viewers. It is really neat to go through the images and get the 3-D view of how things were on the battlefields. However, there are some images of decaying bodies and blown apart body parts on some of the reels. My husband and I would quickly flip through them and either give the OK to view or just show them several pictures. Also, at The Ossuary near Verdun, you have to get close to the windows to view all the bones; it's easy enough for your kids not to see. The movie shown there, although excellent, was very intense, contained foul language, and I was moved to tears. Some museums, like The Museum of the Surrender (WWII) in Reims are entirely innocuous and my kids really enjoyed looking at all the old uniforms and different size shells. It can be tough to find the balance between sleeping at night and informing your kids about the atrocities of war (and the sacrificies made by those that went before us).

You might Google "Dale Booth Tours" and see what you think. He did our tours back when he was with Battlebus and I was very impressed with his ability to relate to the younger people in the group. I'm pretty sure he has kids of his own, but he has the energy of a kid if not. As long as your kids are the type to be engaged, he might be a good bet.

Dina - took our kids to the D-Day museum in Caen when they were 10 & 13. We all LOVED it. My daughter (who was 13) is the sensitive one and I don't recall that there was anything that bothered her to the extent that she couldn't handle it. If anything, we were surprised by how much we liked this museum and how much time we spent there - we dragged our feet on the way out as they were closing and wished we could have stayed longer! The saddest part for me was looking at the faces of some Holocaust victims - but they were not the graphic photos that you can find elsewhere. My son who was 10 at the time enjoyed the D-Day beaches VERY much. He does like history, but the one thing to remember is that these are, indeed beaches. So there were people walking around, flying kites, etc. It was not all intense and/or museum-like. They both climbed in and out of the holes/trenches at Pont du Hoc. It was not the quiet solemn place that the American cemetery was and that was a good thing. It made the cemetery all that more meaningful and the kids were very respectful when they were there. We also went to the German cemetery and my son liked that one more than the American one because there were very few other people there so we really quietly walk and talk about things. Though my husband is the WWII buff, the time we spent in Normandy was an incredible experience for all of us.

just came back from that region. Every single normandy sites we saw are quite kid friendly. Nothing nude, Nothing bloody, nothing dramatically graphical. The only place we did not visit was the Caen Museum, we decided to do the smaller and less crowded Bayeux museum instead. I don't think graphic stuff is the reason why the tour won't take kids. I think it's more because of the responsibilities and the annoyance kids may bring. The movie showed at arromanches or the one at Bayeux mostly just sort of bash and hint on the incompetence of Americans instead of anything graphical in nature (like we didn't do much in WWII...) The movie shown at the American cemetery made me felt better about being an American. have fun!

btw, we didn't join any tour group. We did everything in our citroen C4 rental and our GPS. I will share a good site I found with you on normandy beach which helped me tremendously, with maps, global positions data and everything: http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/beaches.html

I finally got around going to Bayeux this summer and went to the D-Day Museum there. The one in Caen I had visited thoroughly ten years ago. Both have their good qualities. The Bayeux museum serves as a better introduction if one is rather new to the history of these D-Day and Normandie events. The charge usually leveled at the Caen Museum is that it suffers from information over-load, the validity of that criticism I can see, although I don't agree with it. Caen does indeed give a great deal of information, which is good provided one is well acquainted with the operational history of D-Day and Normandie. I like the references to the sources in the Bayeux museum, direct quotations from authors well versed in the topic, such as Keegan, Wilmot, etc. See both places.

There is a film and other media presentation at the Caen museum part of which is loud and emersive. Think shock and awe. Some people (of any age) might not like that. There are also posters and other exhibits with anti-semitic content. These are powerfully executed and could be upsetting. None of this is in any way gratuitous or inappropriate, nor are there blood-and-guts sorts of things. Most kids are pretty sturdy, but I don't know yours. So I'm just detailing the things I think would be most likely to upset, if anything would.

Thanks for sharing the info. The WWII books and "The Longest Day" DVD I ordered came in and the kids spent some time today looking at the books. They are excited to get to go to the D-Day beaches. I think we will skip the movies. The kids understand war is brutal. They comprehend that there are deaths and injuries, but the images of it can cause nightmares for my children. (My son didn't make it through the first Harry Potter movie because it scared him so much, yet he's read every book in the series.) When they are older we can add that stuff in.