A Matter of Perspective
Yesterday I tried to teach my son about 9/11. We have talked about the subject before and watched just small snippets of TV coverage specials in documentaries, but I am not ready to show him the human terror and carnage that is depicted. He is nine, so he understands more now and we are reading the I Survived series currently, focusing on the 9/11 attack. The memory for those who lived through it will never dull and even though my other three kids were not grown, with my older son only being eight at the time, they all remember the fear as the country virtually shut down as a result of the unknown. What would happen next? Were we safe? Never before had our country ever feared outsiders. Never before had war been on our soil. Now we were afraid and we hugged our loved ones closed and dared to think...what if, and not in a good way.
My nine year old is a fairly empathetic person. He feels bad for others when he sees them hurting or in pain, yet he seems to see 9/11 as "just another day". Maybe I haven't let him watch enough coverage. Maybe the fault lays in my protective nature, but I just don't feel he needs to be subjected to bodies falling out of 100 story buildings and people talking about the sound they made as they hit the ground.
9/11 bonded our country in a way that anyone who didn't live through it will never really understand. We are now raising a whole new generation who wasn't there, didn't feel the fear or see the endless coverage. While I envy them that in a sense, I hope that we, as parents and educators, can help them to feel the patriotism and brotherhood that 9/11 brought to our country while allowing them the benefit of not having to say "I remember when...".
My nine year old is a fairly empathetic person. He feels bad for others when he sees them hurting or in pain, yet he seems to see 9/11 as "just another day". Maybe I haven't let him watch enough coverage. Maybe the fault lays in my protective nature, but I just don't feel he needs to be subjected to bodies falling out of 100 story buildings and people talking about the sound they made as they hit the ground.
9/11 bonded our country in a way that anyone who didn't live through it will never really understand. We are now raising a whole new generation who wasn't there, didn't feel the fear or see the endless coverage. While I envy them that in a sense, I hope that we, as parents and educators, can help them to feel the patriotism and brotherhood that 9/11 brought to our country while allowing them the benefit of not having to say "I remember when...".
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