Column # 225

Terrorism for Children

Living the Life of Holly
by Holly Winter
© 2006
Terrorism for Children

My eight-year-old students sat in front of me on the floor. I was ready to start a dictation lesson. But they had other things on their mind.

Big-boy raised his hand and waited to be called on. “What’s nine-eleven?”

“Is it a big holiday or almost something like that?” Brown-hair girl asked.

I did some quick math in my head, noting that these children were three-years-old when terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center in New York City, killing thousands of innocent people. No wonder my students didn’t understand the media hype surrounding today. They were alive five years ago, but they were busy getting their diapers changed and sippie cups refilled.

“Yeah.” Angry-boy added. “Even the principal talked about nine-eleven this morning over the loud speaker.”

Brown-hair girl raised her hand again. “It seems like it is something we should know about, but, like, someone forgot to tell us what it was about, first.”

When is the right time to tell children there is more darkness in the world than we’ve been letting them see?

The day they ask.

I felt itchy all over, which happens from time to time when a student asks a controversial question. If only I could stop time so I could take some time to figure out what to say, without worrying the wrong words might slip out in the wrong way, which could put a quick question mark on my paycheck. You know. Questions like: “Does YOUR penis ever get hard, Ms. Winter?” which a first grader once asked me. If I said, “We don’t talk about penises in school.” kids might go home and say, “Ms. Winter wouldn’t talk about her penis in school, but she let Tommy talk about his.” or “Did you know Ms. Winter has a penis?” I crossed my arms, and crossly told those children to get back to work. Tommy got to talk to the school psychologist who called his mother and then had to decide if he was confused because he was looking at pictures, seeing videos, getting fondled, or experiencing something teens normally joke about.

How do I explain terrorism to children, and how come nobody ever explained it to me? All I can remember is that on September eleventh we woke up to the fact that bad people could do bad things to us, because they felt badly towards us, and we accepted this badness out of a wave of hopelessness that wrung us out with 3,000 sudden deaths.

Why was this burden of explaining the unexplainable left to me? I didn’t want to talk about terrorists and planned attacks and suicide bombers and how, really, this wasn’t the first evil act that has happened in our world. These little children looking up to me still believed that the sun looked down on a happy, loving world every day. At what age do we tell them the truth?

When they ask.

Because. That’s what teachers do. We fill in the gaps. We teach, even the unmentionable. Even to children.

My students waited while I tried to piece the world together in a way a child might understand.

“Ok.” I started. “We all know that there are things in the world that are good…like”

“Presents.”

“Snowmen.”

“Getting my allowance.”

“Exactly.” I raised one thumb into the air. After a long exhale, I continued. “And we know there are things in the world that are bad.”

“Like cancer.” Small-boy girl suggested.

One of the aides at our school was in intensive chemotherapy treatments. The kids knew this was bad.

“Yes.” I agreed. “Like cancer. Cancer is really bad.” I tried to think of tragedies that had happened to the families represented in my classroom. “And trees that fall on houses. And cars that break. And grandmas that die. And bad car accidents where uncles die. And dogs that run away from nice families. There are good things that happen in life like birthday parties and swimming all day. And there are bad things too.”

My itchies intensified. The kids were leaning into every word I said. If the wrong words came out right now, I wouldn’t be able to rewind and take them back. There wasn’t time for rehearsal. Now. They were hungry for the information right now, even if I had no idea what to say.

“9/11 was a really big yuck.” I started. “One of the biggest there ever was in the whole world. Because some bad people sat around and thought and thought and tried to think about the biggest, most terrible thing they could do. And they decided the worst thing they could do would be to take an airplane filled with people and crash it into a building filled with people.”

I took a deep breath. “Because if they did that, then all of the people on the airplane would die. And most of the people in the buildings would die, too.”

“That was a dumb thing to do.” Small-boy said. “Because then the bad guy driving the plane would die too.”

“Yes.” I said as softly as I could, holding my breath.

Big-boy smiled. “Then the bad people are dead!”

How I envied this kind of thinking. Maybe I should let them have this hope. That the bad guys are gone forever so they might live thinking…No. Can’t tell a half truth. “There are more of these bad people, or terrorists.”

“Yeah. But.” Red-haired girl said. “The bad guys lost some of their friends, so they had to suffer, so that’s kind of like a punishment to them.”

Maybe I don’t have to tell them how many terrorists there are left or that there are training camps around breeding more of them as we speak. Maybe my only job is to let them know there are some. So. My job is done. This teaching part is done. But. Now I need a lesson. Something to show learning. Some extension: a place to go from here.

“You know.” I sat down in my chair in front of them. “9/11 isn’t a day when we think about the bad guys. That would just make everyone mad, and we don’t want to spend our time being mad all the time. 9/11 is a day to remember the people who died so we can remember to make our world a better place in memory of them.”

Small-boy sat up. “Do you know anyone who died?”

“Yes.” I clenched my teeth. I didn’t want to talk about this. Didn’t want to remember two amazing friends who’s laughter still rings in my ears. “I had two friends who were in one of the towers when the plane crashed into it. They both died.”

“When’s the last time you talked to them?” Brown-hair boy sat up straight.

“Before 9/11.” I said, sadness dripping off my voice.

“Maybe they got out of the building after the plane hit it….”

“Yeah…Ms. Winter. Maybe they just never called you.”

“Maybe they’re going to call you tonight….”

I smiled at students who wanted the world to be round and rosey and easy and just. “No. They died. Three thousand people died.”

Small-boy raised his hand. “Is that a lot of people?”

I took a deep breath, breathing into the pain of two sorely missed friends. Two close friends dying in a hate crime is way too many. Considering three thousand people dead and the millions of lives these three thousand people touched is impossible for even me to fathom. I tried to put it into kid terms: “Three thousand dead people is like no more video games and no more T.V. and no more movies, ever, for the rest of your life. That’s how big it is.”

“That’s too much.”

“No. I can’t live like that.”

“Bad people have to go to jail.”

I held my hand up to the children who would one day change the world. Call me greedy, but I didn’t want to watch them become jaded and spend their days thinking about the wrong, rather than planning something right like so much of our society seems to do. Our children need to start placing their little stamps of morality into our culture today, before they become tranquilized and forget their childhood innocence. I needed to magnify their heart-felt good now, not later.

“The United Nations, the boss of all the countries in the world, has said the next eleven days are days of peace. What can you do in the next eleven days to make the world more peaceful?”

Angry-boy raised his hand. “Blow up the terrorists. Our world will never be safe till we blow them all up into smithereens.”

I bit my lip. “Hurting people isn’t about peace. Hurting people is about war. The United Nations has called for peace. How can you make peace?”

Angry-boy raised his hand. “But, we’ll only hurt the bad people.”

I smiled and tried to talk over him. “We’re going to think about ways to make peace here at our school. Right here in our community. Because even third grade children can make a difference in the world.”

Angry-boy dramatically held his hands on his head. “Ms. Winter. Bad people NEED to be hurt or else they’ll hurt US.”

I hid the irony of his words in my eyes. My, my, how our culture has taught children to lean on the negative and never, ever consider the positive. A lesson for us all?

“You’re going to write ways YOU can make our school and our city more peaceful…”

I released students to their seats where all of them wrote their simple plans for peace:

“Be nice to my little sister.”

“Make a new friend.”

“Help a friend who is crying.”

“Laugh when my brother tells a joke.”

“Come when my mother calls me so she doesn’t have to yell a lot.”

“Be nice to kids who are new to our school.”

“Pick up trash.”

“Tell the principal she is doing a good job.”

“Pet my dog.”

“Read to my little brother.”

“Eat my vegetables without pretending to throw up.”

“Get to school on time.”

“Hug my dad every morning.”

“Share my pizza with my cousin.”

“Practice my instrument every day so I can play it for people and make them happy.”

“Stop fighting on the soccer field.”

“Draw.”

I can’t dull the blow terrorism has placed on our country. And though I’m all for letting kids sit on Santa’s knee, I’m not so sure about letting them watch our war news; they understand a giving Santa, but children may never understand what war offers through its many disguises.

How do you teach children about terrorism? With tiny talks, followed by big, realistic kid plans for peace.

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Holly answers all e-mails. E-mail her:
holly@livingthelifeofholly.com

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