On Conversations I'd Rather Not Be Having

Thinking back over the past, say, 2 years, just about the time my little girl really started to take in the world around her and ask questions and remember absolutely everything that she sees or hears, I've had to explain some pretty bad things to her.

The list includes, but is not limited to, tornadoes, hurricanes, power failures, racism, school shootings, and now, terrorist attacks.

I'm not saying I'm any good at having these conversations, but I have had a lot of practice.

Some of these are pretty easy.  Natural disasters happen, they can be a little scary at times, but when you break it down for the kids ("The wind gets going so fast that..."), eventually they stop asking to hide in the basement every time they hear thunder.  (She really only hid in the basement because she thought it was fun.)

Some others, the ones perpetrated by other people, are harder to explain to a little kid.  How do you make them understand homophobes, or racists?  How do you explain someone walking into a school with a gun, or planting a bomb in a crowd of innocent people?  How can you ever explain someone willfully harming little children?  How can you make them understand what happened without giving the poor kid nightmares?

And how can I even begin to explain something that I can't even understand?

(And now it seems like I might need to explain ricin at some point in the future.  I don't even know what ricin is!  I'll have to Wikipedia that shit!)

Monday night, we didn't even try to explain.  We just sat and watched our little girl do somersaults and cartwheels in the living room, rather than sitting and watching the news.  I think that might have been the very best part of the day, because we were safe, and we were together.

And that gave me hope.

And hope, and love, are powerful things.

And as I watched her, I thought about what I will say when she does finally start to ask questions.

I'm not trying to give out any advice here. I'm not saying that my way of thinking about this stuff is right.  But I am saying that I (like, I suspect, too many parents lately) have struggled with these questions, and have found myself wondering what to say about the unspeakable, or if to say anything at all.

(Brief political sidebar:  Please, please, please pass some kind of gun control act that will at least make these conversations a little less frequent.  This is exhausting.)

Can't I just pretend nothing happened?

No.

Don't hide this from your kids.

I don't know exactly when or how kids managed to process that there are good people and bad people in the world.  Maybe it comes from cartoons where heroes fight villains, or maybe it comes from seeing adults act like jerks for no good reason, but by the time kids reach the point of starting to build an understanding of the world around them, they know bad people are in the world somewhere.  Pretending nothing bad ever happens will only backfire, when they hear someone else, either another child or another parent or a teacher or just someone on TV talking about it.  And then, you lose the chance to control the information they are getting.  And, in case you haven't noticed, every time something horrific happens, half the information that comes out about it is dead wrong and potentially more damaging than the truth.

So talk.  Keep it simple, keep it within their vocabulary, don't recite the entire history of violence since Cain and Abel, but talk about it.

Perhaps the most important thing I want to stress to my daughter is that she is safe.  The reason terror works at all is because it reminds us that we are not safe, that something bad could happen to us at any time.  And this is true, but no more true than something amazingly good happening to us, like winning the lottery.  Right now, she is safe, she is surrounded by people who love her, and will do everything humanly possible to keep her safe.

And I'm going to let her lead me on what she wants to know, and what she is worried about.  I'm not going to force her to listen to me if she really just wants to turn cartwheels in the living room.  Cartwheels are good; never interrupt a kid doing cartwheels.

And there's something else that sticks in my mind at moments like these, besides the need to hug my daughter so tight that she starts squirming and saying, "Daaaadddd," in that voice that clearly expresses that I'm interrupting cartwheels when I said that was something you should never do, and that's just how many good people there really are in the world.

We don't know yet who set those bombs in Boston.  But we will.  Very few acts of terrorism have gone completely unsolved.  They even caught the Unabomber, eventually.  But whoever did this, be it one nutcase or one small group of nutcases, he or they are nothing compared to the thousands of people who are now working day and night to help those who were hurt, or find those responsible.  In the world where cynicism is the easy way of understanding how people act, it's amazing to realize that for every one nutcase intent of doing harm, there are thousands, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of good people dedicated to keeping us safe, to stopping bad things from happening, to helping people after bad things do happen.  I'm talking about police and firefighters, and paramedics, and doctors, and soldiers, and (yes) politicians, and I'm also talking about teachers, and neighbors, about other regular folks who lay flowers at memorials, who give blood, who organize fundraisers, or who do something as simple yet as amazing as walking in a Starbucks with a $100 and buying coffee for total strangers.

I truly believe that people are good.  It just seems that sometimes we need to remind ourselves of this.  I hope in the future, we can find a less horrible way of doing it.

And that's what I want all parents to do: to remind their kids how much they are loved, and how much they should give love in return.  Because if we do our jobs right, if we instill empathy toward other human beings, if we teach that love if greater than hate, that hate is just fear and anger and misunderstanding twisted together, we can stop violence in the space of a single generation.

Because we can raise a generation that doesn't hate.  And the cycle stops.  Forever.

Finally, I would like to give one piece of advice which I believe could do a great deal of good in the days to come.  (I know, I said I wasn't going to give advice.  But just this once.  Full disclaimer:  I not an expert on anything, except maybe alcoholic beverages.  Take this advice, or not, with that in mind.)  This advice goes for adults as well as kids, and it's this:  Take a break!

Turn off the damned TV.

Stopped reloading cnn.com every 5 seconds.

Stop watching that video over and over again.  (Really, once is enough, or even too much.  Just stop.)

Take a break, and limit the media exposure.  The media has, as it always does, latched on to this story and won't let go.  They try to pry everything they can out of everyone, they listen to anyone who claims to know anything, and they take little of no time to check the facts and make sure they are reporting accurately.  I understand why this happens, why every news outlet is afraid of falling behind everyone else, why everyone wants to be the first to "break" the story, but the only things they are breaking is our sanity.

We do not need to be exposed to this stuff over and over again, especially now, when half of everything said is total bullshit.  The truth will come out in time, but right now we are being inundated with half-truths and misinformation, with a couple nutty conspiracies theories for flavoring.

Just take a break.

Do some cartwheels in the living room.

You'll feel better. I promise.



For more advice, from people who, unlike me, actually know what they're talking about, you can do a lot worse than the amazing folks at onetoughjob.org.  (Full disclosure:  I'm married to one such amazing person, and I'm damn lucky to have her at times like this.)  That said, trust no one else on the internet, ever.  Including me.