Sunday, 16 December 2012
In the wake of the terrible tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, our biggest concern here on the homefront is how best to stockpile our weaponry with a bleeding heart liberal of a president breathing down our necks to deal with this with Owen.
He’s quite anxious, nervous, and sensitive about violence and harm befalling children. He recently watched about 5 minutes of some 1970s B-movie (on TV one weekend afternoon) and saw a baby get killd in some natural disaster, and now he’s been upset about it ever since. He comes downstairs 10 or 15 minutes after going to bed and cries to us that he can’t get the image out of his head.
So…the recent murdering of 20 elementary school children would surely weigh far, far heavily on his mind.
We’ve decided not to tell Owen.
The problem is, not all parents of seven-year olds are sure to feel the same way. And that’s just fine; I’m not deriding their parenting. I’m sure some kids out there can handle this sort of news, and I’m sure many parents are probably thinking, “Well, I better tell my kid, ’cause I don’t want them finding out some other way.” But the thing is, even if mom and dad are discerning as to whether to tell their kids, I don’t think the same can be said for the kids themselves. Bottom line: there’s a good chance Owen would overhear the news on the playground tomorrow.
The other problem is, we live in the information age. We don’t blare the radio news in our house, we don’t subscribe to any newspapers, and we only turn the TV on when we have a specific show to watch (even then, we mute the commercials). But even with all that, it’s tough to keep the terrible news from Owen. Just this evening, in fact, we turned on the TV to watch the season finale of Survivor. Thanks to the NFL, it was delayed, so when I turned on the TV at 7:00, 60 Minutes was airing. …And they were airing a story about the shootings. We shut off the TV for a half hour (until Survivor was supposed to start), but then there was live broadcast of President Obama’s address…about the shootings. Two hours later, just before the host announced the winner of Survivor, he requested a moment of silence out of respect for Friday’s victims. My quick thinking wife switched to a different channel momentarily.
Anyway, Jennifer was in touch with Owen’s teacher and one of the school counselors this weekend, and the latter recommended keeping Owen home from school tomorrow. There are no plans at his school for an official meeting or discussion of the events, but it will likely be a topic on the lips of many of the kids throughout the building.
I am curious how other parents of 5-10 year olds are handling this, or plan to handle this. I checked on Facebook for some insight, but since I try not to read posts written in all caps or exceeding three exclamation marks, there wasn’t much rational content there.
As a parent of three kids ages 8, 10, and 12 I find it is best to be straightforward by simply telling them the facts about a mature subject and only going into further details if they have questions. My wife chose to not tell the kids on Friday until I came home from work and we could discuss it as a family. I briefly told them that some innocent little children were shot and killed on the east coast, but I reassured them that they are safe at their school.
I figured it would be easier for them to hear bad news about what happened from their parents than to hear about it later at school and have no idea about what happened. I did not go into details about the shootings and I did not allow them to watch the news this past weekend. We are not a family that watches the news everyday, because there is so much violence out there that is scary for small children.
I want to protect them until they are older and can understand that just because there are car bombings and wars and turmoil over in the Middle East does not mean that bad things are going to happen like that here where we live.
P.S. Here was my Facebook post on Friday before I deleted it:
EVERYBODY IS SOOOOO DUM LETS JUST GET RID OF ALL GUNS NOW!!!
I picked my eight year old up from school on Friday and told her about it straight away. I guess we have things worked out similar to what Cory mentioned — state the facts and answer questions. I did make a point to tell her not to bring it up with other children. She has experience with keeping things on the DL (Atheism, Asantaism).
Another thing we did was we found an article that had a picture of each of the victims and we went through them together. Four or five times my daughter said things like, “That could be ________,” naming someone that she knows who the child’s picture reminded her of.
Thanks for your comments, guys.
This shows why it’s so tough to say “Parents should do this,” or (even worse) “I would never do XYZ if I was a parent.” Different kids require different styles of parenting and different decisions for things like this.
I’m totally on board with telling my son how life really is. When he asked where babies come from, we told him the nasty, hairy details. A few weeks ago, some of my coworkers were talking about how difficult it is to talk to their kids about drugs, and all I could think was…what’s so hard about that? But, like I said, kids are different, so I don’t know their situations fully.
Sounds like you guys handled it good for your kids. Cory – if my son was 10 or 12, like your two oldest, then I think we’d have to say something. As it is, at 7 (and a half) he’s right on the cusp of knowing what’s going on in the world and being completely clueless.
Just last night, he started crying about something his music teacher told him last year about a baby getting killed in a tornado, so I think his anxiety level is such that I’m just gonna hope this passes by without his notice. The timing of the winter break is fortuitous for us in this regard.
Speaking of different kids requiring different parenting, my wife and I were saying that if our daughter was the 7-year old, we would probably tell her. I realize it’s difficult to extrapolate the likely personality of a 7-year old when they’re only 2, but she seems like the kind of kid that would both find out about it anyway, and would handle it better.
Here’s another difficulty I have, though: If we were to tell Owen, or if he were to find out, I would feel a strong urge to assure him that he’s safe at school; implying that this couldn’t happen to him. But…that’s lying, right? I mean, he’s no safer at his school than those kids were at their school, unless I dig up some arbitrary qualification (like, “Hey, your gym teacher used to be a navy seal!”). If anything, I would guess that he is now less safe than thos kids were due to the (albeit extremely small) possibility of copycat crimes.
I had a similar extrapolation thought about my four year old. I considered that I might not have told her about the shooting in the same way that I told my eight year old had she been eight. Not necessarily for sensitivity issues, though. My older daughter has always been really good at communicating her understanding. She asks questions and regurgitates things in a way that helps me see that she really understands the things I tell her. My younger daughter listens just fine, but there’s rarely any conversation. It might be that she’s getting it all, but without the level of feedback that I’ve always received from my older daughter, I don’t think I’d have a good gauge for what she could/should be exposed to.
You bring up a good point about reassuring the kids. I said this very thing to my wife last night. Actually, I was defending myself because I didn’t reassure my daughter when I told her the news. In fact, I went the other way… because I’m an idiot. One of the things my daughter said in response to the news was that her school has these lockdown drills and that she knows what to do in that kind of situation. In response to that I countered with something like, “Well, the kids at Sandy Hook were in lockdown too.”
So after reading Cory’s comment and hearing some of the ways my workmates handled their talks with their kids, I realized I screwed that up. When I told my wife, she was not happy with me. That’s when I came to the idea that I wasn’t sure how I could reassure her anyway. My wife and I decided to go with statistics. I mean, I know you pointed out that they might actually be less safe due to copycats, but really, it’s still very unlikely that our kids will have a mass shooting at their schools. When our kids are twenty and are reviewing how nothing like this ever happened at their school, it won’t be because some gun laws were passed, or armed guards were posted in their schools, or teachers started packing… it’ll be because almost nobody has this kind of thing happen to them.
Yeah, on second thought, kids might actually be safer now (again, by a ridiculously small margin) because school staffers are on alert and security is being beefed up. But still, the best sercurity in this instance is statistics. It’s the only way I, for one, am able to get on an airplane.