Septemer 11.. How Do You Explain It to Your Child?

My daughter's 4th grade teacher showed them this video, which was made by Nick News, so is appropriate for children and doesn't contain any gory images: http://www.nick.com/videos/clip/nick-news-what-happened-t...

She sent out the link to parents so we could see what the kids saw, and continue to answer any questions the kids might have. I thought it was a very well-made video, just right for a grade school child. I hadn't stopped to think about it, but September 11, 2001 changed America as we know it, before either of my kids was born. They have never known the world any other way but at war, and constantly on alert.

There's a pretty good News special on Nickelodeon. Maybe you can watch it with him. It's especially for kids who were born after 9/11.

Hmmm you know, maybe we should be asking the people that had to tell their kids about Pearl Harbor. I was thinking about that myself today, I really do wonder what they were told.

If it were me I would phrase it just like that woman did. At five there is no need to go into great details. If a child is old enough to ask questions beyond that, then I would just answer honestly. They will find out the truth soon enough.

i wondered if anyone would ask this, i almost asked myself. the other morning the news played some of the audio from the air traffic controllers from the morning of 9/11, and our son came into the livingroom to find us both emotional, and me crying. he asked what was wrong, and i told him (he's almost 5, next month) that some people flew their airplanes into some buildings, and hurt a whole whole lot of people. and it made me sad. he thought for a minute, and said, "did they die?" and i said that yes, a lot of people did. he is just starting to get the first little hints of what "dying" is, so i'm not sure how much he got it, but he didn't ask anything else. it was a big moment for me. i realized, this is something SO huge in our lives, that our kids have no idea about. we will never share that, he will never have any idea. he won't ever understand what it was like to live through that time. like the other poster said, similar to pearl harbor. it's just so huge to me that this person i share SO much with, and give SO much to, will never share that with me. that's big.

i think it's just important to keep it age appropriate, but honest. just like everything else.

I like the way you explained it to your son. I would explain it the same way you did.

Hello, Personally, I think you handled it just right. Children don't really look for detailed responses. They usually just need the basic information. To give a five year old too much information about 9/11 might just stress him. I would also not play too much of it on t.v. in front of him. That's just my opinion. I am sure there are a lot of other opinions and I respect them.
K. K.

We got an email asking us to dress them in red/blue. I knew they were going to have a remembrance prayer and each child put a flag on campus. I wanted to give him a heads up so he could raise his hand to answer questions, if asked.

I said...there are bad people from other countries called terrorists and they do bad things, like hurt people. They killed almost 4,000 people one day 10 years ago, and it is a day that people will never forget.

He did ask if they could do it again, and I assured him that our country has learned ALOT from that experience and we can count on being safe. then he started talking about how sad it must have been for all the kids that lost their parents. He's turning 7 in November and extremely mature emotionally...love that kid!

I think that it is fitting to deal with any national tragedy with care and compassion. Bottom line, there are people in the world that choose do do very bad things. Those bad things effect us all. Whether it is genocide in Uganda, or massive school shootings, or Sept 11th, its all about teaching my child what is right and wrong and how to deal with conflict at the very root of the issue and without any violence.

M

At such a young age I don't. If I was forced to say something I would just say that we were remembering some people who had died. I personally wouldn't mention "bad" people at all. My kids don't watch much tv either and certainly no adult or big kid channels so they won't see anything related to 9/11.

i talked about this today. I told them bad people stole 4 airplanes, 2 of them were flown into very tall buildings in NY, one into the pentagon, and then I started to get choked up, so my husband told them that the last plane was saved by the passengers and crashed into a field. Thankfully they didn't ask why people stole the planes, because explaining that would be difficult.