postcards for parents

greetings-

Last night President Bush gave the 48 hour ultimatum on television.  
The countdown to war has begun.

Ten minutes after his speech ended, my phone rang.  As I answered it, 
a sigh of profound relief rasped in my ear.  My son, who is at his 
dad's this week, said, "Oh, Mom, thank god you picked up."  

And then he started to cry.  He went on to express his fear and 
anxiety about the raising of the terror alert level to high.  

We're supposed to fly to Arizona on Thursday to visit my mom for 
spring break.  He was torn between wanting to cancel our flight and 
stay home 'where it's safe,' and begging for us to get on the plane 
immediately, so if anything happened regarding air travel, we'd be 
grounded with grandma instead of without her.

These are fearful times.  Our children are scared.  Television reports 
are targeted at adults, but kids see them anyway.  The newspaper and 
magazine headlines scream out in the checkout line at the grocery store, 
and the radio news reports preempt the music on our car stereos.  

Even for those of us who intentionally limit our children's access 
to the media, there's no escaping the sensationalism. 

Remember when all you had to do was just leave the nightlight on or 
spray mommy's perfume to keep the monsters under the bed at bay?  
Now the monsters of war and terrorism are real, and we're afraid 
of them, too.

I won't lie to my kids, so I couldn't tell my son that everything 
will be OK.  I couldn't promise that nothing bad would happen here 
in America.  I couldn't promise that he'd be safe.

I had little to offer in the way of comfort or reassurance.  All I 
could do was allow him to speak freely, listen deeply with my full 
attention, and respond with compassion and understanding.  

Here's what I want you to know, in case you, too, face that conversation 
with your child:

That was enough.  

He didn't need false comfort, he needed a compassionate listener to 
witness his feelings.  He worried, he cried, he cleared.  And even 
with no promises of safety, he relaxed.  Fifteen minutes later, he 
was telling me about the antics of his new puppy in a joyful voice.

Now maybe there was more going on below the surface.  Maybe at some 
level he was monitoring my anxiety (or lack thereof) and mirroring it.  
Or maybe not.  I guess I won't ever know that answer.

I did tell him that I wasn't going to let the fear of terrorism keep us 
from visiting his beloved grandma, and that in truth, life is a risky 
proposition every single day.  

We are much more likely to be killed in a car accident than in an act 
of terrorism on an airplane.  The reality of life in a human body is 
that it ends at some point.  And that's also the gift of it.  Knowing 
it will someday end give us the opportunity to make the most of each 
day ... sort of like when we start to reach the bottom of a bag of 
candy, and we start slowly savoring every nibble instead of gulping 
it down without tasting it.

My son is twelve, so your conversation with a younger child might 
look different.  You might need to tell your child that you'll do 
everything you can to keep him safe.  There are other articles and 
recommendations for talking about war with younger kids.

Here are a few websites that might be helpful:

 http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/war.html
http://www.psych.org/disaster/childrentragedy11801.cfm

But for those of you with kids old enough to see through your 
reassurances - old enough to know better - it might be time to 
spill the beans about the impermanent nature of life.  

None of us knows when we will die.  And we don't need to know.  
Our business is to live life to the fullest, and let death take 
care of itself. 

I think kids understand this.  It makes intuitive sense to them.  
They don't want answers or guarantees.  They want their feelings 
to be heard and acknowledged.  

We can do that for them.  In fact, it might be all that we truly 
can do.  Luckily, it seems to be enough.

Good luck, 

karen