Question about 9-11 and young kids

[RangerPooh]

I teach pre-k at an elementary school and yesterday teachers were the only ones suggested to wear patriotic colors, I'm not sure if the older kids asked what that was about. Our class kept working when the announcement came over the PA system that discussed what Patriot's Day was and why we were observing it. Being that young they were oblivious to what was said, and we just mentioned that we were honoring the men and women who lost their lives 8 years ago. No questions were asked. Personally I'd wait a few years to discuss the topic.

 

[PrincessKsMom]

My DD was in kindergarten as well on 9/11. She had a classmate who lost his mom, a teacher who lost her stepfather and another childen at her babysitter who lost her mom. I also work in NYC and was there that day. She's been surrounded by it ever since. Every year I take off from work and for the first 5 years, I would go in for the ceremony. She was curious one year and asked if she could come. I brought her in and she saw the faces of those that were lost, people crying, but also the outpouring of love and compassion for everyone who was affected. I think no matter what you decide for your children, make sure they see both sides of the events that day. It was the most horrific thing, but a lot of good came out of people bonding together in the weeks and months that followed.

 

[bumbershoot]

The kids in Costa Rica told 60 Minutes some of the worst memories don’t fade because the media won’t let them. Pelley got an earful about showing those pictures of 9/11 over and over again.

"Even when you’re just sitting down like eating dinner and watching TV, you’ll just have a nice conversation and then all the sudden you’ll see like pictures of 9/11. You can’t escape it. It’s just like everywhere you go its always like you’re always reminded of it somehow even in the littlest thing," explains Amy Gardner.

"They’re showing my dad’s death and everyone else here. It’s just really offensive. Every time I see it, it brings up so much and it actually really hurts," says Erik Abrahamson.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/11/nyregion/11kids.html

But all of the children of Sept. 11 are bound by at least one thing: the burden of mourning a private loss that is, at least for this country, historic in stature. Many of the children watched the attacks on television. Year after year, they are confronted with an ambush of reminders - at the movies, in classroom banter, on a poster at the supermarket. To the children, these are not the well-worn images of towers falling and planes crashing, but the deeply intimate, devastating scenes of a parent's death.

"It was seeing my dad die over and over and over again," said Sarah Van Auken, 15, whose father, Kenneth Van Auken, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Well...if each individual parent had died separately, they would STILL be ambushed by memories. They would remember at random times. It would come up, again and again, inside their heads.

And, even though I wasn't a child when my mom died, so maybe it's different, I WISH the world would stand still on the anniversary of her death. I wish that everyone had known of her and would honor her, and would allow me some time every year.

I think maybe that since those whose parents died don't know what it's like when others lose their parents, they might be blaming the world for things that would be happening all on their own. I had some friends growing up whose parents had died, and they didn't mind talking about their lost parent at all.


ON the other hand...maybe it means they are getting double the dose. What comes up in their own minds and hearts PLUS whenever someone else mentions it. on the other other hand, one of the continuing heartbreaks after you lose a parent is that people STOP mentioning your parent. They don't want to "hurt your feelings", or "bring it up". And that's its own separate pain, feeling that your parent has been forgotten. My mom shared a name with a correspondent in DC, so every time I watch the news and her name is mentioned, it's nice. If they were actually mentioning my mom, it would be even nicer. So I guess they just don't know that these things would come up at odd times anyway...




So! I was born during the Vietnam War, and my mom didn't let the TV be on during news hour at all while we were little. Since nowadays, it's news time all day long, I bet my mom wouldn't have the TV on at all, and at 4 there is no chance that she would have talked about it AT ALL. We just don't watch the news around here, and the TV is usually on Sprout/Noggin or watching a movie. My 5 year old knows nothing about 9/11, except that we recently got a big world map and he was asking about wars, and I showed him Iraq and Afghanistan and gave him a tiny little bit about there being wars going on now. And that's it. No need for more until later.

And later, I'm sure it will feel just like it did when I started learning about the V War...absolutely unrealistic, until his 30s when he realizes just how close in time it was...

 

[Jen414]

Every year on 9/11, I read "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers" by Mordicai Gerstein to my fifth graders. This beautifully done book won the Caldecott Medal in 2003 or 2004, I can't remember which. Anyway, although it's not technically about 9/11, it does make a veiled reference to them on the first and last pages. The book is the true story of Phillippe Petit, a French street performer who rigged up a wire between 1WTC and 2WTC and walked between them one August morning in 1974. It is a great jumping off place for a discussion . Some years my kids ask a lot of questions and some years they don't. This year, it was hard to actually read the story as they just wanted to talk about 9/11.