WONDER: how to talk to kids about current events

Lately the news about wars, uprisings, and natural disasters has been unavoidable. How do you share serious current events with your kids?

Read about our experiences next and/or leave a comment of your own after the jump. I’d love to hear what works for you.

Growing up in my house, news was an everyday thing. Each morning, a newspaper waited on our dining table where it stayed (and was read) until it was cleared away for dinner. Each evening and most bedtimes, my parents tuned in to a network news broadcast. The good, the bad, the touchy-feely—all of the news was equally inescapable in our household.

In comparison, our boyos experience very little news. Husband and I both get our news online, so I can’t remember any time when we’ve actually watched a news broadcast. And although I dallied with subscribing to the newspaper just for Sunday coupons, the guilt of recycling a completely unread newspaper every week was just too much. On one hand, this is good because it means that we are only exposed to the news we want to be exposed to. On the other hand, we have raised two boyos who are pretty sheltered from world events. This past week changed things considerably.

It started last Sunday when we were eating in a new Chinese cafe. Along with our complimentary lemonade, lemonade, iced lemon tea, and yin-yang coffee-tea (you can guess who ordered what) we also had two screens of complimentary tv. We’d all look up occasionally to see how badly the Lakers were trouncing some poor saps. (It was embarrassing.) Then there must have been a news clip because the next thing we knew, Xander’s brow was furrowed and he was asking, “Is there a war or something?”

This took us completely off guard. The boys, of course, know what war is. They engage in it daily—although, granted, they are most often battling aliens for ultimate control of the universe. But the idea that there is a real war going on somewhere in the world was complete news to them. So you can imagine their surprise when, later, we revealed that not only are there multiple wars going on around the world at any given time, but our very own America is engaged in two right now.

X took it in stride after awhile, returning to his lunch and his Lakers. Blaster, however, was obviously overwhelmed by the news. This was a conversation I would’ve been happy to hand over to their dad, but he was being Circumspect Husband at the time, so I blundered on with the kindest, gentlest explanation of the War on Terror that I could muster. (I don’t know which was trickier—explaining the concept of war to an 8 year old or trying to do it without offending his father.)

What struck me, however, was how completely heartbroken B seemed. The idea that people in the world hated each other—even hated us—enough to attack innocent people genuinely troubled him. And really, why shouldn’t it? Have we become so desensitized to the idea of war and violence that we’re no longer heartbroken when we see reminders of them? Together we agreed that war is a terrible thing. My sweet boy needed more comforting and reassurance and Kobe before he eventually settled back to his lunch.

Then disaster struck in Japan. At breakfast that Friday morning, the boyos noticed me watching a news clip online, so I explained what had happened. Together, we watched the silent scene of what seemed like an innocent, slow-moving wave advance—until we noticed that the wave was effortlessly tossing along cars, trucks, and buildings. In those early days, there wasn’t even much talk about casualties or deaths, but the boys were upset all the same.

So I’ve been wondering lately about the best way to discuss these sad and serious topics with our kiddos. Of course this would depend on the ages of the kiddos in question. I wouldn’t blab the same things to a three year old that I would with my almost-nine-year-old boyos. These older kids should certainly know about what’s going on in the world, but I’m hoping that there’s a way to do this without filling them with fear about whether these same disasters can happen “here where we live.”

One bright side to this—if there can be one when talking about world troubles—is that it has opened more conversations around here about people in the world. The boyos have trouble understanding concepts like borders, distances, corrupt governments, and even large numbers. But they understand people, and they know how it feels when bad things happen. So in personalizing the news, they are learning to care for the world, pray for people in need, and form an opinion of justice that goes beyond which kid got a bigger scoop of ice cream. As dismal as the news is these days, raising kids who know and care about the world is our best way of planting some young hope for the future.