Mother Courage

 My 7-year-old loves to build with Mega Blocks and recently got a warplane kit of them, which he spent several days putting together. One morning, his 4-year-old brother saw the box and asked me why there was fire coming out of the front of the plane, which is supposed to be a machine gun. On the box, the photo makes it look very realistic.

   I sat down on the floor next to my son and took a look at the box. “Well, this is a warplane,” I began, “and that’s a gun,” I answered, trying to keep it short and sweet. “But what’s it for?” he pressed. “Well, in war, planes are used… See, the gun on the front of a plane is for shooting…War is what happens when two countries don’t agree on something and can’t work it out by talking. So they use guns…” I paused, yet again, unsure how to continue. “I don’t know how to explain war to you,” I said to him, and I kept looking at the box. He came over and hugged me and said, “Here, Mom, I’ll give you some love so you can think better.”

   I had always hoped that I’d be at least somewhat prepared to answer my kids’ tough questions when they came up. I’m not a queasy, uncomfortable sort who shies away from difficult topics; I think the truth is best, because it can open up avenues for discussion and further questions that lead to a real understanding for kids. This enables them to go out into the world and make well-informed choices. Maybe my problem was that I was trying to justify the reasons for war in my own mind. Or perhaps I wanted to give him some logical rationale for why guns are used on people at all.  Knowing Ben, if I’d continued with the short answers, he would have persisted with questions like, “Why would somebody shoot at a person?” “Does it hurt?” “Why would somebody want to hurt someone that bad?” “What’s an ‘enemy’?” “Is he a bad guy?” My answers would have been shorter, but no easier.

   Of course it’s not feasible to try to hold a political discussion with a 4-year-old, but at the same time, I don’t want to lie to my kids or tell them things that go against my own beliefs (what parent does?). So many other questions raced through my head: Should I downplay the danger of guns so he thinks they’re harmless, or just toys? No, that will just bring more problems later on. Should I put him off and change the subject? No, because I want him to be able to ask me things without discomfort, and know that I care about his understanding them. So instead, I kept trying to come up with a simplified explanation of war, and all I could boil it down to was people killing other people because they disagreed. How do you explain that to a preschooler? I am among many adults who don’t understand it.