I had a regular newsletter ready to send – the first of the year! – so forgive me for holding it back. Sharing articles about vaccine distribution and returning to school simply felt tone deaf given that the pandemic was not the scariest part of the past 24-hours in America. I write this even as our country logged more than 250,000 new coronavirus infections yesterday, a full quarter of a million on a single day. Not the scariest piece of news from January 6, 2021. Let that sink in for a moment.
 
Instead of links and memes, it feels far more pressing to speak to parenting through this enormous moment packed with calls for violence, demonstrations of deep disrespect, and acts of aggression. Beyond what we say to ourselves (I personally haven’t figured that one out yet, have you?), what do we say to our kids? What should they see? What shouldn’t they? What’s the balance between sheltering them from worry and encouraging them to bear witness to history?
 
There isn’t one way to parent through epic moments, of course. We’ve had a few to contend with recently, so we all know this truth. But it may help to realize that the tools needed yesterday and today and likely tomorrow aren’t necessarily any different from the strategies we use day in and day out as we raise our kids, even despite the extraordinary nature of this moment. Here are a few that you already have in your arsenal – I encourage you to lean into them.
 
  • Pause and consider where your kids are at developmentally. That’s the very best way to determine how to talk to them about the current state of affairs. When our kids do something outrageous or disappointing or just plain old naughty, it’s a parental reflex to consider where they are at developmentally before choosing how to handle the situation. What was she thinking? helps us try to find a starting point from which to discipline, educate, or both. Today, consider asking a very similar question – what will she think? – before launching into a description of current events.
 
  • Remember that traumatic memories are sealed more indelibly. Our brains recall the bad things that happen to us – and the very, very good, too – far better than the mundane. Consider this before sharing intense imagery with your kids. Some of the pictures coming out of the capitol yesterday were frightening; the same could be certainly said for pictures coming from the protests last summer, and hospitals over the past 10 months. It’s been a hell of a year. If you’ve got younger kids, weigh all of this before you leave a news program playing in the background or before you scroll through social media with a child by your side. It’s just as important to remember that many older kids have unfettered access to these images thanks to phones, laptops, social media, and news alerts, leaving us with no real sense of what comes across their screens on any given day. (Sound familiar? It does when you swap out the topic of rioting and replace it with porn.) This is all a long way of saying you can try to drive the content they see and with younger ones – and you should – but the older your kids, the steeper this uphill climb.
 
  • Recognize that the indelibility of the moment depends upon age. I often find myself wondering if a certain moment will be remembered by my kids decades from now. Since momentous occasions tend to be cemented more predictably, and what’s happening in our country is nothing short of momentous, we all face the heady job of helping to shape that memory in real time. But memory works very differently depending upon age: the brain has to be mature enough to file and pile these clips. This is why your first independent memory – not one documented in photos or shaped by family lore, but one that you can conjure completely on your own – probably dates back to the 2nd or 3rd grade. And so, if you’ve got a younger child, he may not be able to retain what’s happening in the world around him, no matter how historic. For this kid, focus on answering questions and addressing the emotional component (like fear, a clear byproduct of witnessing violence and mob mentality). If you’ve got an older kid, though, one who is old enough to hold onto the scrolling images of this moment, then grab the moment. Talk about what’s happening in our country proactively; share images and articles you deem important or impactful; try to help cement the experience. If your kids have the capacity to remember the events of this week, they will thank you years from now for helping them to frame it in their minds.
 
  • Talk to them constantly, many times, over and over again. It’s identical to the advice I give about puberty and body image and sex. If there’s an issue you care about, you need to engage in multiple conversations. If there’s a lesson you hope they’ll learn, you’ll have to impart it and then repeat yourself over time. There’s so much noise in the world today – so many people spewing opinions on all sides – that if you want your voice to resonate, you’ll need to restate yourself. Just because you’re the parent doesn’t mean your opinion is the truth; in fact, as kids get older, it becomes their job to take the opposite tact.
 
  • And perhaps most importantly, don’t forget to listen. Sometimes we feel like we need to make our point with such urgency, we forget to solicit our kids’ perspectives. That’s a mistake every time. Conversations are, by definition, 2-way… otherwise, it’s a lecture. And lectures, as we all know well, often fall on deaf ears. Besides, if you listen to their thoughts, ideas, concerns, and impressions, you will learn something.
 
I don’t know quite how to end this, probably because we’re all in the midst of it. But I leave you today with wishes for a happy, healthy, safe new year.