Talking To Kids About Inexplicable Violence

About a year ago, I began writing for New York Family magazine and was talking to editor Eric Messinger about possible parenting topics to explore. We somehow got on the topic of 9/11 and I mentioned that my husband and I hadn’t yet fully discussed the events of that day with our children, the oldest of whom was 7. Eric suggested I write about just that – how and why we discuss evil with our children. I went home, and thought about it, and tried to write about it, but I couldn’t. The truth is, I just didn’t feel compelled to expose my child to a world of inexplicable violence. My son had gotten our intentionally brief explanation, after stopping by a 9/11 memorial, that “many people died in two buildings that fell down in New York before you were born.” The time would come, I figured, to explain the larger circumstances, but not yet.

Children are, of course, no strangers to fear. Without knowing any specific threat, babies intuitively understand that being alone is scary and they crave closeness with their parents. A preschooler’s shadowy understanding of death is no less sophisticated than ours. But the fears of my children’s nightmares don’t give me pause just yet. Their dreams are filled with the relatively harmless evils of siblings who steal toys, Cheerios that aren’t given on demand, and, at worst, animals that chase. “It’s okay,” I can tell them, “there are no lions in New York City.”

In too many parts of the world, there is no such remove from fear. But even in New York City, this year, we’ve known what it means to feel vulnerable: the capricious destruction of Hurricane Sandy, the insurmountable grief following the shootings in Newtown, CT, and earlier this week, the two bombs that went off in Copley Square.

It no longer seems like I’ll have much choice in how and when I talk about these things with my children. I’ll take Mister Rogers’ advice, in pointing out all the helpers and guiding my children to focus on the good. “There are people who choose to do terrible things – there always have been and there likely always will be. But most of us choose to do good things.  Most of us choose to do good when it’s easy and also when it’s hard. Just look at all the people who probably felt scared, but went straight to help the hurt.”

I now realize that my children’s nightmares might start to look more similar to mine, filled with familiar places and everyday circumstances blown apart by evil. My hope – the only thing it feels in my power to wish for – is that when they wake up, it will all have been just a dream.

Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen is a local mother of three. An indoorsy type, books are her only hobby. As such, she is a former literary agent who currently writes, edits, teaches writing, and reviews books. She and her family live on the Upper West Side.