Moms Talk: Do You Explain 9/11 to Kids?

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This week's question comes from , a contributor and North Potomac-Darnestown Moms Council member.

How did your children respond to the significant media coverage and all the attention paid to the 10th anniversary of 9/11? What questions did they ask? And how did you answer?

I heard that the school my second-grader goes to was going to talk about it, as was his Sunday school. In order to address it the way we wanted to, we decided to talk to our son about it—though I had hoped to wait. I got a book out from the library called On That Day: A Book of Hope for Children, by Andrea Patel. It doesn’t talk about the specific attacks—just that the world in mostly a peaceful happy place, but sometimes things are not. But children can help by being happy, laughing and playing. It explains it a lot better than I just did.

First, we asked our son what he knew, so that we could dispel any misinformation then we filled in the gaps. He asked a lot of questions: hijackers, memorials, where are the planes, where are the bad people. It was not an easy conversation. In a few weeks we are going to take him to see the Pentagon Memorial and talk more about the meaning of the memorial, the goodness of the people who helped the victims, and the goodness of the people who built the memorial and how memorials help the families.

On 9/11 we went about our day as usual. My kids who are almost 4, 6 and 8 were really unaware of the significance of the day. We didn't turn on the TV and didn't watch any of the coverage. We usually don't have the news on regularly because I feel that the coverage on a day-to-day basis is not appropriate for the age span of my children. When I feel they are old enough and mature enough, I will discuss what happened on that day and what happened as a result of that day.

My children were 3 and 5 years old on Sept. 11, 2001. We didn't hide anything from them. When they asked questions about what was happening, we answered the best we could and didn't shield them from the news at that time—although we did restrict the amount of news they saw. We felt that to try and keep them "in the dark" even at that age wasn't the right thing to do, plus they would hear things at school from friends and other parents, so we wanted them to hear the truth from us.

Ten years later my son is 13, and my daughter, 15. We don't watch a lot of TV. What we do watch is usually recorded, and we fast forward through the previews / commercials so they were not subject to the media coverage in the week or so preceding the anniversary. On Sunday we watched some of the ceremonies and the documentary 9/11 by the Naudet Brothers, who happened to be filming at a local fire station near the World Trade Center that day. We were all very moved by the movie and afterwards talked about planning a trip to New York to visit the memorial. New York is our favorite city to visit in the U.S., but we have not visited the site of the Twin Towers since before September 2001.

My kids are between 9 and 13 years old. I did not allow them to watch TV coverage of 9/11 anniversary. I didn't want to watch it myself! I was disturbed by the detailed content, having already lived through it, and I certainly do not think it was appropriate for kids. All they understand is the sadness, but not what it means. 

Schools are not yet including 9/11 in history or social studies classes, not even at the high school levels. The younger ones are barely aware that there are two wars that the U.S. is engaged in because of it. So, I spent my time with them explaining what happened on 9/11, how scared we all were and that the wars we are in are a direct result of those events. They did not ask a lot of detailed questions. 

The politics behind it all is way too complicated for them.