I sat down and explained to my 8 year old son about what was going on. His only question? You think they’ll come out with a World Trade Center play set, you know, with little buildings and airplanes? To be a child again, where bad things are only comic book bad. I remember being about his age, maybe a little younger, and worrying if the vietnam war ends, that they might stop making G.I. Joes. I hate being a grown up.
I overheard La Principessa talking with a few members of her peer group, all these 11-year-old girls brightly chattering. And what they were chattering about, I realized with sinking heart, was the fact that the medium-sized downstate town where we live has absolutely nothing to attract terrorists who might want to fly a jet bomb into a big famous building. They derived tremendous reassurance from the fact that the Sears Tower in Chicago is “hundreds and hundreds of miles away” (actually, just 200).
What goes through their little heads, anyway? The teenagers seem able to comprehend it, and handle it (or not handle it), the way an adult would, but what do the really “little kids” make of it?
I wonder.
From everything I’ve heard, the main concern pre-teen children are likely to have is whether they and their families are safe. Beyond that, it’s hard for most of them to conceptualize the larger issues.
I was kind of surprised by the ease with which my almost-12 year old and my 8 year old accepted the news and my reassurances. They don’t seem to be all that affected by it. The only time they seemed really upset this week was during the time on Tuesday when we were waiting to hear that their dad’s flight (which was in the air at the time of the attacks) had landed safely in L.A. and last night, when Nickelodeon didn’t show the new Invader Zim episode.
Given the difficulty that I and the other adults around them are having dealing with this, I’m happy with their unconcern. They can learn more about this as they get older.
I wonder, too, DDG.
When my sons got home from school Tuesday, I told them that soccer practice had been cancelled. My older one (just turned 9 on Sunday) asked “Is that because of that thing with the plane and the building?”
I asked him what he had heard about that. He said he didn’t know anything, just that something involving a plane and a building had happened. I gave a brief explanation, that some very bad people had hijacked a plane, and crashed it into a building. (With a brief detour to explain “hijacking.” Oddly enough, he knew about carjacking, but had not hear of hijacking.) He asked “But how did they get out of the plane?” I said simply “They didn’t.” His response was just “Oh.” That was his one and only question about it. His younger brother (5) just stood there and listened, and said nothing.
My kindergartener’s teacher sent home a note saying that they were not discussing it, and giving us some references on discussing these issues with our kids. (One is online at http://www.wcpss.net/parent-tips/index.html ) I’ve asked my older child a time or two if they’re discussing it in school, and he has said they are not. Each time I’ve also asked if he had any questions about it, but each time he says he doesn’t. I’m hoping that this just means that it’s all too far away and abstract for him to really grasp yet at this age.
I wish my kids had a more innocent world to grow up in.
Me, too, for that matter.