Your Life and the News: How to Talk to Your Kids About Osama bin Laden

We went to sleep early Sunday night; the kids wore us out that day and we missed the news. At around 12:45 in the morning the baby cried waking my nearly 5-year-old daughter who crawled into bed with us. Out of habit, I checked my iPhone for messages. It’s from working in a newsroom all those years, I have a paranoia of sleeping through a big story. And for once I did. Not that it matters, I’m home now.

“Mike,” I whisper. “Mike.” My husband is out cold.

“What Mommy?” My daughter Kate wedged between us still awake asks me. I had to share the news with someone.

“The U.S. caught a bad guy, Kate. It’s really good news.”

“What did the bad guy look like, Mommy?”

“He was tall and had a long beard, baby, now go to sleep.”

Kate turns over and falls back asleep and I carry her back to her bed.

I, of course check Twitter before going back to sleep.

About 6 hours later, we’re both up. Mike is on his way to the office, I’m watching the Today show in bed. Kate walks in to my room just as Osama bin Laden’s face appears on TV.

“That’s the bad guy, right?” Her eyes are wide, a bit fearful but brave.

I suddenly have a vivid memory of being about 12 years old and seeing a picture of Ayatollah Khomeni’s corpse at his funeral. My eyes must have looked the same.

I know what’s coming next.

“What did he do?”

Just a few weeks back she was asking why all those people got hurt from the water in Japan. I’m sure in time she’ll ask another hard question about something else.

I answer her in what I call muted honesty.

“That man was jealous of all the freedom we have, and he hurt a lot of people here in America.”

“Is he in jail?”

“No,” I pause. “He’s dead. You don’t have to worry that that bad guy will ever hurt anyone again.”

“He’s scary. Can we watch Curious George now?”

So we change the station, but I can’t stop thinking about what’s she’s feeling now. Did I screw up?

Figuring others may be having similar conversations at home, I spoke to Brenda Stern, a Certified Social Worker. She runs a program with Westchester Reform Temple’s Early Childhood Program as well as a private practice.

“No matter the age of your child, it’s our job as parents to protect them. That may mean in some cases turning the TV off if it becomes too much.”

Stern explains that with young children, keep answers to questions childlike and simple. You can equate bin Laden to the big bad wolf and just say that he hurt people. Sometimes kids this age aren’t asking so much and just need a simple answer.

“With school-age children, ask them if they want to talk about it or not at first. Sometimes they aren’t ready to talk about it. You can take a situation like this to talk about what our values are as a society. Ask them what they think. Also be aware of what they are asking.” Stern says. She adds that in a highly educated community such as ours, we tend to overshare, overtalk and assume our kids are ready for that, and quite often they are not.

With teens, she says, get their perspective and get them talking first.

“We get into monologues on these issues and it’s nice to have a dialogue. Even with the older ones we don’t want it to be too much gore. Kids reduce things to black and white; talking can get them to think more about the grey areas.

She concludes; “You always want to gauge the information verses the anxiety it causes your child. Cut off the content if you sense they are worrying too much. Always reassure them they are safe, of course that may not always be true, but you need to provide comfort and reassurance to your child.”

Someday my kids will learn about the tragedy of September 11th; that they have a grandfather who lost friends that day too numerous to count. That their father saw bodies fall from the buildings and ran as fast as he could when the towers fell. Someday, a long time from now, they will know these horrible things and the evil that was Osama bin Laden. For now, at least, my older one knows we caught a bad guy on Sunday and it’s a good thing.

Jen is a freelance journalist who has covered the economy and markets for over a decade at a major financial news outlet. She lives in Scarsdale with her husband and 2 children. Jen has yet to bake a successful batch of cookies.