When I was pregnant, I thought a lot about the kind of relationship I wanted to have with my unborn child. It would be 100% harmonious, of course (though when we fought, it would be the kind that I could then shake my head amusingly and think “oh you! The pains of growing up!”) My child would confide in me and tell me everything on their heart and mind. And my child would seek my council, considering me to be the wise omniscient presence in their lives.
Obviously none of this came to fruition.
I was blessed with children who tell me nothing about what happened in their days (but tell me everything about the rare pets they got in Roblox), who roll their eyes when I share advice, and at least one who is capable of the kind of meltdowns that do not make me shake anything amusingly.
And yet, over the last few months - and maybe even the last year - the kinds of dreams I had for our parent-child discourse have been replaced with a feeling that a new kind of conversation is actually what’s needed. As our children have witnessed a global pandemic, a contentious election and domestic political environment, a national reckoning with racism, and an increase in global antisemitism, there are new conversations emerging and a new kind of wisdom I feel obligated to impart. Because while my instinct is often to shield my children from hearing about bad things happening, I also believe children need explicit and developmentally appropriate conversations with their adult family members to help them understand and process the world around them.
There are many good sources for talking to your kids about difficult topics - I particularly appreciate Betsy Brown Braun and Common Sense Media - so I don’t want to address how to do this. Rather, I want us to think about why we do it. These conversations are not easy - they can be messy and uncomfortable and even tense. They can shift our children’s understanding of the world, and not always for the better. And if we are the kind of parents who want to protect childhood, how do we find a balance between maintaining our children’s innocence while also exposing them to the challenging parts of our world?
First, it’s important for us to remember other challenging conversations from which we do not shy away. I imagine that most of us have, or expect to have, talks with our kids about puberty, about sex, about drugs, and about alcohol. Even if these subjects feel awkward and even if we are not sure what to say. And we find support for those conversations: at Pressman, for example, we hold parent-child councils in the upper elementary and middle school years so that parents and kids have a chance to speak about these topics in a safe and supportive environment. We don’t shy away from discussing these issues, clumsy as we may be, because we know that they are too important to avoid, and because we know parents have an important role in guiding their children towards a healthy and whole future. In several studies of drug usage, for example, researchers have found that parents who have open communication with their children about drugs and alcohol in fact minimize the impact of their children’s usage.
We need to take this same approach to discussing race and anti-semitism and current events, even when it feels like it would be simpler to skirt the conversation and stay on neutral ground; as with their ultimate choices around substances, our children may not make every decision the way we would wish, but we want to have our voices and our values in their head when they think critically about issues of such magnitude for themselves, for our country, and for our people.
These conversations give us the ability to (with a deep breath) model how we want our children to see and be in the world, to demonstrate for them how we make meaning and how we hope they will too. I remember a few years ago when one of our graduates was going to continue at a public high school; she told us that her parents imagined she would face anti-Israel rhetoric, and they wanted her to face it in high school when she still lived at home so they could help her process and respond. Or as my friend and colleague Hannah Bennett shared with her community: “Childhood is a dry run of adulthood. It is our children’s opportunity to learn how to be the human beings they are meant to be, and we are their teachers.”
I want to be really clear that I am not advocating for any specific approach to these topics. We have a wonderfully diverse community. Each of us has our own hopes for how we would like our children to absorb different issues, and we have a wide array of ideas about the lens through which we want our children to view the world. But whatever your perspective, I absolutely am advocating that you thoughtfully share it with your child - even when the topic at hand is challenging to explain or understand or contextualize. Before too long, our children will inevitably seek to understand the world on their own. They will process current events with their friends and they will find the news sources that resonate with them, and you may or may not like where they land. This is of course good and healthy - after all, part of the work of becoming an adult is finding one’s own point of view. But now, while our children are young, is the time to make sure that our voices are in the mix - especially on topics that really matter. Because what we talk to our children about now will inform the decisions they will make, the values they will hold, and the type of analysis they will deploy as they grow.
While sitting down to discuss race or policing or anti-semitism or sexuality can feel really daunting, these conversations allow us to think about what is important to us and to help guide our children in the direction we would like them to take. Ultimately, these are the conversations that give us the chance to shape our kids into the kind of human beings we want in the world. It’s sacred work, really, and while it’s a lot messier than my pre-pregnancy imagination -- it requires a lot more courage than doling out advice to an ever-ready listener and a willingness to be brave -- it will also yield the kind of impact I believe we all dreamed of when we first thought about becoming parents.
