Thereâs a catch 22 at play here however. We have the situation where we are in danger of raising snowflakes and then the danger of exposing them to too much, the need to protect them as you have said. Where do we draw the line?
My 4-year oldâs crèche pal wasnât in for a few days a while back and he came in one evening telling us it was because her grandad went to the sky. My life partner has become friendly with the kidâs mam and she subsequently told her that her Dad had passed away. Now my little fella regularly asks about going to the sky and he brings it up out of nowhere. He was eating his breakfast on Saturday and just blurted outâŚwhat will happen to me & Conor if you & Mammy go to the sky? I tell him not to worry about that, as people usually go to the sky when theyâre very old. Itâs probably the wrong response but I donât know what to say to him. That leads onto his number obsession. What age will you be when you go to the sky? Oh 100. What age will I be when youâre 100? What age will Mammy be when youâre 100? What age will Conor be? How many people live in the sky? And off we go.
I thought you said this lad was a maths genius? Thatâs some fairly basic addition and subtraction right there. Youâll have to tell him heâll never realise his dream of being an actuary if he doesnât up his game.
Teenagers have had to deal with a deadly pandemic where 1000s were being killed, scientists warning them that the future they have is bleak due to catastrophic climate change & then a war breaking out in Europe where there is a small chance that nuclear war might break out
Unfortunately it isnât though. These three problems are examples of needing collective responsibility.
Believe me nobody is more sorry than me that the pandemic ever happened. But it was a problem that required collective responsibility, individual responsibility simply wasnât enough.
Neither is it with the other two problems. We have to deal with reality.
I grew up in what I consider to be a golden age to grow up in in Ireland. The years 1985 to 1995 and probably a few years after that saw a lot of good news or what we perceived as good news on so many fronts both in Ireland and internationally. It was on balance a very happy time.
We were informed but not overwhelmed.
The perception of joy of that time nearly makes it harder to deal with the constant negativity of the last eight years or so. The feeling of ever more pervasive negativity the western world has felt really goes back as far as September 11th, 2001.
Since 1945 things had largely been on an upward curve, with peaks and troughs here and there.
But there was a belief in the progress of humanity in general that was constant throughout that time. On September 11th that belief was shaken and has declined seemingly irrevocably ever since in favour of suspicion and deep cynicism and negativity. Our information age has helped to enable that.
We as a species have overreached and are pushing the natural world to its limits. We have to deal with this reality.
A neighbour said she is going to tell her girls, one is 6 and the other is 8, that there is no Santa and that she has to buy the presents because the girls have asked for some presents. All this because she doesnât want to spend the money.
Thereâs an awful lot to be said for making a joke of it, then changing the subject. I usually say something along the lines of âIâm faaar too good looking to dieâ and then ask something else. You donât want them staring into the abyss. Not even glancing into it really. I do think itâs been brought so far out that suicide is almost like a genuine life choice. This may well just be my perception. I think @fenwaypark had it right though. Iâd rather back off than put too much pressure on. Herself thinks she (we) are failing as parents because we donât have the Facebook didsbury lifestyle. I just tell her they are warm, dry, fed, safe and loved, and they see us going out to work every day. We may be too tired of an evening to sit on them doing their homework, or check their grades, or make them practice piano or what have you, and we get about two emails a week from Hopperâs form teacher about stuff not handed in or missed, but he seems happy.
Always aware it only takes a few minutes though. Itâd make you feel sick. I donât know how youâd go on as a parent. It really doesnât bear thinking about.
The santa story is getting harder and harder to preserve. Our 8 year old is in a class with a girl who family donât do the santa thing so the tale that âsanta brings presents to all kidsâ is shot out of the sky and I can see her thinking hard about the whole thing.