Telling the Truth
As our seven-year-old grandson sagely commented after the London bombings, “The world is not a safe place”. But what should one tell children about such atrocities? or about natural disasters such as the Boxing Day tsunami? On the one hand, one wants children to feel secure, loved and cared for. On the other, they see images in the media of people who are injured or killed, powerless in the face of the forces of nature or suffering because of man’s inhumanity to man. What do they make of it all? and what should adults do and say to help them?
The London bombings brought one of the world’s great cities to a brief standstill and the deaths and injuries directly affected some hundreds of commuters. It has to be recognised, though, that over recent decades, the suffering of people in many other countries has been much more extensive and acute – Congo, Rwanda, Iraq, Cambodia, Sudan and the Balkans, for example. In every one of these countries and in many more, parents have had to cope with wanting to offer a secure upbringing for their children in settings where millions have died, been maimed or raped, or driven from their homes. The difference between them and London, Madrid and New York is that in the big cities there are thousands of people with cameras and mobile phones, able to transmit the terrible images, while in rural areas of Africa and Asia, the atrocities often proceed unreported.
The starting point in deciding what to tell children perhaps has to be an acknowledgement that for the foreseeable future, whatever governments do to counter terrorism, it is likely to continue to be a feature of life. There will always be some people who feel disaffected – sometimes for good reasons, sometimes because of personal problems – and some of them will from time to time take unpredictable action which affects others, causing death and destruction. Natural disasters will also continue. It will also be a fact of life that communication is likely to continue to improve, so that children will continue to see pictures of disasters and atrocities. In a global electronic age all children are at risk of encountering horrific images and news at any time, and often without appropriate adult support.
They will therefore know that their parents cannot guarantee their physical safety and indeed in many countries it is the parents who themselves suffer in genocide campaigns. The security which parents can offer is two-fold – first their unconditional love, which every child needs, and secondly a recognition of the truth of the situation (as the parent understands it) without rationalisation or fobbing-off. A person whose upbringing has been based on the love of parents and who has been taught to face the reality of the situation they are in has a better chance of survival, success and a full life.
The world is not a safe place, as our grandson said, but it is also crammed full of opportunities, things people can enjoy, people to meet and get to know, and places to see. To make the world safer, we all need to work to make sure that these opportunities are available to all the world’s children. The fact that we cannot guarantee safety should not be allowed to put children off all the positives of life.
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