Talking To The Kids About Haiti
How much to show and tell them without inducing nightmares?
By Joan Indiana Rigdon
Haiti is horrifying for any parent, for any person. I can't stop thinking of one photo, of a woman half-buried in rubble holding her hand out to the photographer for help; of all those buildings leveled like closed accordions.
Between the Web and Twitter and text, I've donated money; tracked the progress of the USNS Comfort hospital ship across the Atlantic; read on-the-ground pleas from doctors with not enough IVs. At one point a journalist friend sent news of a particular clinic 70 miles north of Port-au-Prince with seven doctors and not enough patients. Along with others, I echoed its coordinates into Twitter and felt briefly useful.
All the while, my 7-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son have been leaping across my lap, construction-paper light sabers drawn, calling each other "Master Windu" and "Master Yoda" as they hurry off to councils in their bedrooms to plan how to save the galaxy from the evil Sith lords.
Now: how to connect my kids' good will with the real world? And how much can I tell and show them without inducing nightmares?
Personally I remember nothing about world events from my early childhood. Instead my sense of reality came from murder, suicide and other violence in my urban neighborhoods and school, which is another story.
See also:
The Giving Chain
When To Have The Birds And The Bees Talk
Time For An Allowance?
Are You A Best-Friend Mom?
Now I live in the suburbs and my own children live the relatively sheltered lives I want them to have. But I don't want them to stay that way. Like a lot of other well-meaning parents, I want them to use their advantage to grow up to be world citizens who can think about others and read a map. The question is how to get from here to there.
One friend who grew up in what she calls the Leave it to Beaver suburbs says she and her siblings learned a lot about the larger world from their dad, a juvenile delinquency judge who sometimes had to place children in homes to get them away from abusive parents. As a young child she overheard about cigarette-burned babies and other abuse. As she got older she joined in dinner-table discussions about her father's work.
While the details of child abuse were sickening, my friend says the knowledge didn't traumatize her. Instead, she says, that's how she and her siblings learned that there is evil in the world and that their dad was doing his best to fight it. In fact the whole family pitched in by helping out around the various youth homes where some of the children were placed.
Keep reading to find out how this mom reconciles the balance between innocence and reality.
Readers: How are you explaining the tragedy in Haiti to your children?
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See also:
The Giving Chain
When To Have The Birds And The Bees Talk
Time For An Allowance?
Are You A Best-Friend Mom?
