Talking to your children

You are not persuading anybody. There is no room to win, no opponent and no audience. The person in front of you is frightened or confused and depends on you, and two things decide whether this went well: whether they feel safe, and whether they come back to you next time.

So put down the reflexes the rest of this site teaches. Hold your line. Refuse the framing. Have the answer ready. Aimed at your own child, every one of those does harm.

None of this has to happen today. If your child has not asked, you are not behind, and nothing here is an instruction to raise it. Nor is any of it developmental psychology: what your particular child can take is yours to judge, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

Answer the question they asked

Children ask small, specific questions. Adults answer with the whole history.

“Why does that man hate us” does not need 1948. It needs an answer about that man.

Give the smallest true answer you have, then stop, and let them ask again. If they want more, they will ask for more. If they have had enough, they will change the subject, and that is information rather than a failure.

Weak: five minutes on where this comes from and what it has meant for centuries.

Strong:

“Some people are unkind about Jewish people. That man was being unkind. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Where this backfires: a very short answer can read as a door closing. Say the door is open.

“You can ask me about that whenever you want. Any time, even if I look busy.”

“I don’t know” is allowed

You are allowed not to know. You are allowed to say that grown-ups disagree about it. Children hold both of those better than adults expect them to.

“I don’t know. Let me find out properly, and I’ll tell you on Saturday.”

“People I like and respect don’t agree about that one. I’ll tell you what I think, and I’ll tell you what they’d say.”

Then go back on Saturday. What a child cannot hold is discovering later that you gave them a version that was not true. That costs you the next question, and the one after it.

Rough ages, roughly

These bands are approximate and they overlap badly. Read your own child rather than the heading.

A young child who has heard a word. They want to know whether they are safe and whether they did something wrong. Answer those two, in that order, and keep it concrete.

“You’re safe. I’m here, and Miss Bennett is there at school, and that man was wrong.”

An older child being asked about it at school. The pressure here is social. Other children ask them to account for a country, and they have no idea what they are allowed to say.

Give them permission to decline, out loud, in words they can actually use.

“You don’t have to answer for a country. You’re eleven.”

“You can say ‘I don’t want to talk about that’ and that’s a whole answer. Even to a teacher.”

A teenager meeting it online. They may have seen far more of it than you have, and they will know at once when you are behind. Ask before you tell.

“You’ve probably seen more of this than I have. Show me what you’re looking at and I’ll tell you what I think of it.”

Where this backfires: a teenager who shows you something and then gets a lecture will not show you the next one.

Do not make fear the inheritance

This is the hardest part of it, and it matters more than the accuracy of anything else you say.

It is possible to prepare a child without handing them a world in which everybody hates them. The difference sits mostly in what you say about the people around them, rather than in what you say about the danger.

Weak: “People hate us. They always have and they always will.”

Strong:

“There are people who hate us. There are many more who would stand in front of you, and some of them live on this street.”

Name them. A child can carry a general danger if they can name three specific people who are on their side.

“If something happened at school, Mr Ferreira would go through a wall for you. So would Amara’s mum.”

And when you have to say a thing that is true and frightening, put the people before the danger.

“I’ll tell you the truth about this, and I’ll tell you what we do about it. We’re not on our own.”

Where this backfires: a child told repeatedly that most people are kind, who then meets something ugly, can decide you were managing them. Say both halves every time rather than only the reassuring one.

When something happens at school

Before anything else, listen to the whole account. Do not interrupt, do not reach for your phone, and do not react while they are still talking.

An adult who visibly panics teaches a child not to tell them next time. That is the real risk in this section, and it is bigger than getting the follow-up wrong.

“Tell me the whole thing from the beginning. I’m not doing anything about it until you’ve finished.”

“Thank you for telling me. Nothing bad happens to you because you told me.”

Then ask what they want to happen. Older children often have a clear view, and overriding it has a cost you pay later.

“What would you like to happen? I might not manage all of it, and I’ll tell you honestly which bits.”

After that, write down what was said, when it happened and who was there, while it is fresh. Taking it to the school is a separate job with its own shape, and the guide on raising it formally with your institution covers it.

When the question is one you find painful

Older children ask about Palestinian children. They ask about things they have seen. They ask whether their own side is in the wrong.

Meet it honestly. A parent who cannot hold that question is teaching their child to take it somewhere else, and somewhere else will not love them.

“What you saw is real and it’s a terrible thing. I’m not going to sit here telling you it isn’t.”

“That’s a good question, and I’m glad you asked me and not the internet.”

Then say what you actually think, which is not the same as what a page thinks. Readers here land in different places on that, and a child can tell a borrowed opinion from a held one faster than any adult can. Either of these is honest.

“I think some of the things our side does are wrong. I still think the country has to exist. I believe both of those.”

“I don’t think that one’s wrong, and I’d rather tell you that than say what you were expecting. Ask me why and I’ll explain it.”

Where the question is really about a specific charge, the claim entries on this site carry the argument. Read them yourself beforehand, then talk like a parent rather than reciting one.

Your own state arrives first

Children read the adult, not the content. If you are frightened or furious, that is what they take from the conversation, whatever the words were.

It is legitimate to say you will come back to it tomorrow.

“I’m too upset to do this properly tonight. It isn’t you, and it isn’t anything you did. Can we do it tomorrow after school?”

Then do it tomorrow. A postponement that never arrives teaches the same lesson that panicking would have.

Four things not to do

Do not show them the footage. Not to prove a point, and not because they are old enough. If they have found it on their own, talk about it, and do not add to it.

Do not use them as an audience for your own argument. A child being talked at, rather than to, learns to stop asking.

Do not make them the family’s representative. Briefing a child to correct their classmates hands an adult’s job to somebody who will be punished socially for doing it.

Do not correct their friends through them. The friendship is theirs, and it is worth more to them than the point is worth to you.

Households differ

Some readers are raising children inside a Jewish community, where a child hears a version of this from ten adults. Some are the only Jewish family in the town, and their child is the only one in the school. Some are in a mixed family where the other parent sees this differently.

Those are three different problems and one page cannot solve them all. Where two parents disagree, the thing a child needs least is to be the place the disagreement gets settled. Name both views without contempt, and let the child keep both parents.

“Dad and I don’t see this the same way. You’re allowed to think about it and land wherever you land.”

Twenty minutes this week

Fill in the blanks153 words

Two questions first, answered from memory, because they are the two you will need at bedtime with no page in front of you. What is the smallest true answer to the last thing your child asked? And what do you say when the honest answer is that you do not know?

Then, twenty minutes. Write down the last thing your child actually asked you, in their words. Then write the smallest true answer, under thirty words, and say it out loud once.

Your plan. If my child asks me something about this, then I will answer in one or two sentences, stop, and wait for the next question instead of filling the silence.

Your coping plan. If I notice my voice changing, or my answer running past a minute, then I will stop, say I want to think about it properly, and name the day and time we will come back to it.