EVENING NEWS MARKS RETURN OF FAMILY TRADITION
As a public relations professional, I handle a daily mix of public affairs and crisis situations. It’s my job to advise clients on how to respond to news events, divisive issues and disturbing content. Sometimes, I forget that my kids are exposed to and keenly aware of those same issues and events. My 15-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son are constantly bombarded by information, images and news stories — both fake and real — from classmates, teachers, friends and of course their ever-present (I would argue surgically attached) mobile devices. While I am proud of how intelligent and intensely curious they are, I worry about their ability to process and understand the non-stop flow of daily information.
My fatherly hands have been forced to have earlier and deeper real-world conversations with my kids than my parents ever did with my brothers and me. We’ve talked about diversity and inclusion, gender and sexuality, cyberbullying and terrorism, and, most recently, suicide, thanks to the popularity of the Netflix hit 13 Reasons Why. My advice to other parents would be to embrace those conversations and lean into them fully.
It’s advice that springs from our decision to resurrect a family tradition declared dead years ago, with the advent of the 24-hour news cycle and digital platforms that allow us to watch what we want when we want it: appointment television.
My wife and I recognized early in our parenting adventures that at the end of the day — conveniently around 6:30 or
7 p.m. — our kids felt the need to unload, often in patience-testing and mind-numbing detail, about everything that had happened to them that day. As they grew older, that venting took on increasingly ominous and disturbing undertones, and their anxiety over current events sometimes manifested itself in questions such as “Can that happen to us too, Daddy?” or “Why would someone do that, Daddy?” or the particularly heart-wrenching “Am I safe in my school, Daddy?”
Faced with sugar-coating the daily headlines or taking a headon approach, we chose the latter. So for the past six years, we have made a point of gathering each evening before or during dinner to watch one of the nightly network news broadcasts. We sit together on the couch and my wife and I become news chaperones, sounding boards, explainers and, yes, more often than we would care to, comforters and assurers that the world, despite all indications to the contrary, is not coming to an end.
And it doesn’t stop when the broadcasts end. The conversations continue long after the thankfully lighthearted Inspiring America, On the Road or xPerson of the Week pieces have wrapped the broadcast. (See, kids, there is some good news today!) While we clear the table and load the dishwasher, we talk more about the day’s news, and answer questions, while occasionally reminding the kids not to talk about some stories at school the next day, as certain topics could be upsetting.
While I won’t pretend that the news of the day doesn’t occasionally provide fodder for nightmares, I feel confident that my kids are developing the tools that will help them make sense of their waking world.
So give it a try. As my dad did years ago with Walter Cronkite, pull up a chair with your sons and daughters and allow evening news anchors to enter your living rooms, so to speak. Cronkite’s signature sign-off from his tenure with the CBS Evening News seems particularly relevant today in describing the very pragmatic approach we’ve been forced to adopt as parents: And that’s the way it is.