Protect Your Child
How do you teach your kids about the worst thing in current events?
It was a special day, the most special day since my son first arrived 365 days prior. Mom, dad, grandparents, one guy my wife worked with in residency and his daughter huddled in the small courtyard area next to the community grill adjacent to the swimming pool. The birthday boy in a dinosaur shirt and red chuck taylors perched on a high chair. An avalanche of Costco supplies strewn about the countertops and tables. Veggie trays, fruit salads, sandwich wraps, chips, drinks and of course a full chocolate sheet cake. That dessert would later be hacked into chunks to be stored in the freezer.
This was early October in California so it was sunny and warm enough. But the wind lashed across my son’s birthday party such that everyone huddled close to keep the candle in his slice of cake from flickering out. It was technically the boy’s first sweet. It would not be his last.
Of course the October birthday followed weeks later by a first halloween with teeth meant that bland diet would soon dissolve along with his enamel. The first birthday was the introduction, where we let him dive headlong into a piece of cake and open his account traversing the road in candyland.
Like all toddlers it started by squeezing the cake and feeling the frosting between his chubby fingers before plopping them into his mouth for further inspection. A terrific mess of crumbs and frosting creating a mosaic of saccharin war paint.
The first child of parents with strong dessert cravings, this introduction was kind of a milestone. As my wife noted repeatedly during his first year of life “sugar, candy, ice cream, those just don’t exist in his world, he doesn’t know about them yet”. So unlike in later years, there was never negotiation over the tip of the food pyramid because it was not previously a part of his life.
The blissful ignorance of youth, unaware of what he did not know. Or what he was missing.
As an American, there were plenty of times during both my children’s life that they could be considered lucky to not know things. During whatever mass shooting(s) were in the news of the week. The newest punitive policy or rule attacking the most vulnerable members of society. The latest name of a Black American brutalized by the criminal justice system. Climate change fueled natural disasters around the world.
In part because of our race and economic status we didn’t have to confront this issue directly unless we wanted to. The troubles could wait. Childhood could remain pure.
My son was barely two when the 2016 election happened. He, and later his sister, could live their lives happy and content in a loving home unaware of who was technically the President. But at some point, it felt irresponsible to not make them understand the historical inflection point occurring in the US during their most formative years.
We talked a lot about the 2020 election. The electoral college is dumb and should be eradicated. It sounds even stupider when explaining it to your children. But I showed them the map and the math and my expectations. I walked them through why we, along with everyone in our family and friends network, were supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. This has led to some inaugural sermons about the role of government and what taxes are anyway.
This culminated in my favorite photo of my daughter. Wearing her Elsa dress watching Kamala Harris become the first woman to take the oath of office for Vice President.
Fortunately, we could always lean on the public library for help. Books about racism, feminism, immigrants, kindness, and freedom were sprinkled into our regular assortment of anthropomorphic animals that dominated the standard book list. Reading books about Ruby Bridges, Jackie Robinson, Sojourner Truth, Muhammad Ali are important and confounding at the same time. Racism is just so difficult to understand through a child’s eyes. The why. The earnest confusion is achingly sad. Knowing how many kids are being taught the opposite, or in Florida, required to do so.
One of the most helpful was The Pumpkin and The Pantsuit which struck a sanguine tone about the 2016 election.
To this day, he’s usually just referred to as The Pumpkin in our family though we don’t spend a lot of time talking about him. We did make time to revel in the latest batch of indictments and the picture of the bathroom SCIF at Mar-A-Lago. Explaining in terms so simple even the guy named in the indictment could understand why you can’t keep those documents.
A few weeks later we were at an open house when my son (then 8) walks into the bathroom.
“Hey dad,” he called out. “Where are the documents?”
“Documents?” I asked.
“Yeah, like the Pumpkin, isn’t this where you keep important documents?” he said sweetly.
My little dude gets it.