Today, in the car on the way to a training for my job, Carter and I had a moment. It was not a particularly pleasant moment (for me), and I hadn't really realized until it was upon me that I would have to meet this particular challenge at some point. (I think it was like most parenting challenges--you know you have to tell your kids about unpleasant things at some point or do the whole "tough love" thing, but it's never quite as hard in your mind as it is in real life.)
This morning, my son learned about war.
Our war. Our warS.
We were listening to NPR's Morning Edition, and the lead story after the news update was an in-depth report about the suicide car bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan this morning. 17 people died. People were shooting at other people. You know, the same kind of news headlines that have become all too common, and therefore have faded into our subconscious mind. They are now just a fuzzy background noise that accompanies all of the "real" stuff going on in our quiet lives here in the states.
But for Carter, it was like a lightbulb went on.
"Mom, who was shooting?" he asked.
I paused and then explained that some people don't like other people, so they use guns to hurt them. I asked him if that was an OK thing to do, and he replied that it was not.
"But, why did they do that?" he asked.
"Because they are in a war," I said.
"What's 'war?'" he asked again.
I turned off the radio. I tried to figure out how to explain hatred and terrorism and politics to a four-year-old who has never had to deal with any of those things before. And tears came to my eyes.
This was the moment when Carter was going to start to see the world for what it is a lot of the time: a scary, hate-filled, uncertain place. This was his first look into all the things that make all of us parents fear for the future of our children. This was his first step out of innocence.
I DID NOT want to have that conversation. But I did. I told him that when lots of people fight lots of other people, it's called a war. I told him that it's sad because people get hurt.
He was fine with that explanation. We talked a little bit more, and then he seemed satisfied and let the topic drop. I didn't tell him that hate-filled people killed almost 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11. I didn't tell him that a sadistic, empty-souled tyrant named Adolf Hitler killed 6 million people almost a century ago. I didn't tell him that there's a good chance that he'll have to live with wars of one kind or another for his entire life.
Am I over-reacting? Maybe. I know that he still feels safe here at home with his family and that what we talked about today will probably not affect his day-to-day life at all right now. But a seed has been planted. A precedent has been set. And it makes me sad to think that this is the day he learned that people hurt and kill other people, a concept he will now begin to witness every day for the rest of his life.
And so it begins.
17 years ago
3 comments:
That is so sad when they start asking questions about real stuff, especially the ugly stuff in life. During a general conference talk my oldest asked me what the speaker meant when he said pornography. That was hard. He's 10 and knows the basics about the birds and the bees and how it's such a wonderful gift from our Heavenly Father. Why does he have to know the ugly side of it now. It's so sad to watch the innocence fade.
So not looking forward to that day... sounds like you handled it well though.
Ugh that is so hard. Hard to explain and hard for them to understand and you don't really want them to understand anyway. When we were watching the Olympics they had a story on about this place in Canada that all the flights were diverted to on Sept 11th and of course they showed the video of the plane hitting the second tower and my DS was all in a tizzy about it. He has talked about it to every new person he sees each day..."did you know a plane crashed?" Of course as they were telling the story I began to cry and he asked why I was crying and I told him because it was a very sad day and thing that they were talking about. And he tried to ask more, but I just finally had to tell him he won't ever understand. I hope I am right.
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