What can parents tell their kids about our fractured country?
Journey Atterbury turned to her father as they watched on television hundreds of rioters storm the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6. The 8year-old girl from Wheatfield asked her dad what was happening near the White House.
“It is hard to even try to explain any of this to her. She asks but I’m not really sure what to say,” said Matt Atterbury, who’s been watching a lot of television news shows the past few weeks. “It is sickening to sit in front of the TV waiting to see what will happen next. But that’s what we do.”
Atterbury has always been honest with his daughter about their life and our world, he said.
“I don’t want to lie to her,” he said. Unless you believe President Donald Trump is a national hero or a cultural martyr, how do you explain his behavior to a young child? So many difficult questions, so many complicated answers.
“She just thinks Donald Trump is a big mean guy,” Atterbury said. “So I’m running with Donald Trump is a big mean guy.”
At the girl’s school, her third-grade classroom conducted an educational “election” before the general election in November. Trump won by two votes. Journey couldn’t believe it.
“He is such a mean person,” she told her father that day. Atterbury wasn’t surprised. Jasper County is politically conservative, reflecting most of Indiana.
“I wish Donald Trump and COVID would just go away so everyone could be nice to each other again,” Journey told her father.
She’s 8. Trump has been in office for half of her life. He’s all she knows as the president of the United States, as well as constant turmoil, friction, debating and hostility.
“It has become a nightly discussion. We are glued to the TV and the news, terrified of what might happen next. It is consuming us,” Atterbury said Wednesday afternoon while watching the presidential impeachment hearing on television.
“It is sad and hard to explain,” he said.
Parenting young children and
teenagers is challenging enough without the added pressures of national politics, a global pandemic, divisive president, domestic terrorism in Washington, D.C., and armed threats of another Civil War.
“What the heck is going on?” said 15-year-old Zach McKim, of
Portage. “The events keep piling on top of each other. In my lifetime I have never seen anything like it.”
Most of us have said the same thing.
Zach watched the Jan. 6 protest unfold in real time.
“It was crazy. I was hoping and wishing that all the senators and representatives were OK and, thankfully, they were in the end.”
I asked Zach if he talked about what happened with his friends or classmates at Portage High School.
“I haven’t so far,” he told me Sunday. “It’s hard to connect to my friends and talk to them with the pandemic. But I’ll get to see them when my school has its first inperson learning day in quite a while. It will be interesting to see what conversations spark.”
His 13-year-old sister, Katy, told me she has been leery of discussing with friends what is happening on the political scene.
“A lot of us are scared to bring it up because of how divided everyone is right now,” she said.
She also watched live news accounts of the Jan. 6 assault, which left five people dead.
“I felt really uncomfortable and scared,” she said.
Both kids sent their mother, Kris McKim, real-time updates as she worked in Chicago.
“Katy didn’t understand why it was happening and how, morally, someone could do this,” McKim said.
Nonetheless, McKim hasn’t censored her teenage kids from news or politics of the day.
“We have always been very open and honest with both kids in regards to politics,” she said. “It’s sad they had to see it unfold the way it did, but we’re thankful that experiencing it live as they did will shape them into being better people.”
Other parents shared differing philosophies on my social media how to address, or not, these complex topics with their kids.
“I’m not telling my kids, who are 10 and 11, a damn thing. I just can’t. Their uncorrupted innocence is a treasure in this world of (expletive),” said Alicia S.
Mimi Burke had impactful conversations with her 17-year-old son.
“He’s at such a great age. Old enough to understand, but young enough to not be jaded by the world and not get sucked into the drama of our social media,” she said.
Tianna Mikula talks openly with her children, preferring they hear such news from she and her husband, not from their peers. “I try to give facts and then ask how they feel about it,” she said.
“I think you need to start by becoming experts in cults and psychopathology,” said Michelle H.
“I explained that adults are not supposed to act like this when things don’t go their way,” Michelle Paredes told her 12-year-old child. “It’s an embarrassment for sure.”
Sarah Tracy compared it with the Black Lives Matter protests last year in multiple cities.
“You should have heard the conversations with my two kids when, all summer long, cities were being burned and destroyed with looting and rioting,” she said.
Dave B. had a surreal exchange with his young son earlier this week.
“My 10-year-old son casually said to me, ‘Hey dad, Trump’s getting
impeached again,’ like it’s totally normal for presidents to get impeached twice in less than a year.”
Tara Elinkowski said it’s been incredibly difficult to explain what has been happening over the last four years.
“It’s especially hard to put it in the correct context during these last few days,” she said.
Next week, as our country’s political heat intensifies through Inauguration Day, I will share advice from Florence Ann Romano, a child care expert from Chicago known as the “Windy City Nanny.”
“I have a feeling we all could use a gut check here,” Romano told me.