What To Do With Your Kids When The World is Burning
Five ideas to keep you keeping on
The other night it was 70 degrees in Oakland, so my seven-year-old daughter and I filled a bag with cold desserts and took her bike to the local basketball courts to sit and lick and watch another mom run drills with her son (“I love the mom-coaching that’s going on!” my daughter remarked. This child tho).
As she fought a losing battle with a very melty ice cream sandwich, Ramona asked me, out of the blue, whether Trump would try and make me not have ADHD, like he’s trying to make trans people “not be trans.” “I guess he can’t,” she decided, “cause that’s just how your brain works.” I pointed out that trans is just how peoples brains and bodies work too, though Trump could try and make them hide it, he can’t change who a person is. She shook her head in seven-year-old rage and determination. “Mom,” she said, “we are FIGHTING for trans rights right now. Oakland is FIGHTING.”
Do I feel some liberal braggadocio relating this story? Not gonna lie, absolutely. It brings me joy and pride to hear my kids not not only engage in nuance, but feel activation and outrage on behalf of their rights and the rights of others. My son doesn’t talk like this, it isn’t a parenting Oscar. But it wasn’t an accident, either. Her interest, her beautiful indignation, came from somewhere.
As I sit here today and mull over that interaction, I think about all of the parents like me who are struggling to figure out how to be right now, in the midst of a sadist, Third-Reichian-takeover of our government, with threats to special education, due process, safety and security, you name it.
How do we parent through this shit?
There’s no right answer, and no perfect playbook for how to raise humans in the middle of all of it (though I have, on the recommendation of a friend, checked that our passports are in order and started traveling with all of my kids’ documentation).
But here’s the shaky wisdom that’s helping me wade through it right now, and that I think played at least some small part in Ramona’s ability to join me in the upset without feeling the crushing overwhelm that I want to protect her from.
Talk like a salt shaker. There was so much more to Ramona’s question about whether the government will make me be not ADHD. We talked about the rights of disabled and neurodivergent children that are under threat right now, and about ADA and IDEA (I didn’t drop the acronyms on her, even adults can’t manage those!). She brought up Dogman creator Dav Pilkey, and hoped that he went to school after schools were required to serve all children (Pilkey talks widely about his ADHD — I said based on reading his books that he probably went to school but did not have a great time).
I did not tell her about RFK’s wellness farms and my genuine fear that my meds may not be available soon. But mostly, I listened and took it slowly. This is, of course, about protecting kids from too much info, but it also helps me manage the dam of fears and complaints that could easily be broken at any time.
What do your kids need to know? A little bit. Then, if they ask, a little bit more. Especially for anxious kids, or for parents like me who are ADHD or otherwise find themselves intensely monologuing, keep small doses in mind. As my mother used to remind me when she made us popcorn (to no avail!), you can always add more salt, but you can’t take it away.
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Read a book. Any book. Books about protest are cool and all, but you don’t need to be didactic to get kids thinking about the key issues right now — empathy and community, being vocal, caring for others. You can read books like the gorgeous Simone by Viet Thanh Nguyen and Minnie Phan that talk about hard things (in this case, a wildfire) or books that just talk about big feelings, like literally anything by the great Judith Viorst, or my dope sister’s new book about having many feelings at once, Olive All at Once.
But don’t worry too hard about selecting the perfect material. Good children’s books weave in the themes of life beautifully, and just reading, say, Dogman together (even if it kind of breaks your brain) can spark conversations and connection. If you are at a loss, talk to your local children’s librarian, or check out anything recommended or written by my friends over at
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Do your thing and let them see you do it. Ramona has several trans or nonbinary friends (who she, like almost all first-graders, refers to as “theys”). But I imagine she’s coming in extra hot and heavy with trans rights because my husband and I recently organized a trivia night to fundraise for the Trans Youth Equality Foundation Emergency Fund. Kids are uniquely attuned to issues of justice (and if you happen to have an autistic child, one of their many strengths may be a passion for equity and the rights of others).
It’s sweet if your kids want to join you, but it isn’t necessary (though I will be doing my darndest to drag them to our local Hands Off! National Day of Action protest this Saturday). You can still point out the “Musk and Trump Don’t Care About You” stickers you posted around town, or the community fridge you added to, or tell them the government officials you called at the dinner table.
Even if you don’t think they’re listening, do it anyway.
courtesy of garrett bucks Rely on other people. One good thing to come out of this shit time is that people are really paying attention to their local communities. I’ve been writing about my grocery share with a friend and talking about my Sunday Potlucks, and also drawing inspiration from all sorts of places. I was really moved by this detailed and beautiful piece on the tradition of stoop coffee from
, ’s piece about finding your community style (with a a throw-back picture of my baby girl in her Batgirl cape), and ’s How to Find Your People Club, which I’ve joined even though we are in a period of austerity in my fam (I can cut back on take out, I can’t cut back on content!).What does this have to do with parenting at the end of the world? Everything. I would argue (and my recent conversations with Debbie Reber and Jessica Slice corroborate this) that dependence may be the skill our kids need to learn the most right now. How to ask for what they need. How to offer. This is the stuff of resistance, of new ways of being when the old ways crumble. I’m not implying that your babysitting exchange with another family is the most critical way to teach your child 21st century skills. I’m explicitly insisting that it is.
Watch Newsies. I do not want to make light of the fact that parents across the country are dealing with incredible crises right now — fear or fact of deportation, relocation due to fear of discrimination or worse for their trans children, the loss or threatened loss of critical programs that support disabled children. AND, every one of us still has to fill the hours of our time with our kids, as well as we can.
When I was ten, I was absolutely OBSESSED with this Disney Musical, which depicts the real-life successful (sorry, spoiler) strike of New York City’s newspaper boys in 1899. But watching it this weekend, which I did in my parents’ bed, with my two kiddos, I was possibly even more in love than ever. If you can forgive the lack of substantial characters that are not White men, the movie (and its songs, don’t forget the SONGS!) is beautiful fodder for the moment.
My kids and I talked about the importance of unions, organizing and organizers (their friend
, I got to tell them, is one of the best!), about how those in power pit the powerless against one another, about the allure of capitalism. Of course the American twist on the story is that it all happened because of one charismatic man (a young Christian Bale is very convincing in this individualistic hero’s journey), but I got to point out to my kids that actually, change happens because of collective action, not celebrity flexing (although hats off to Cory Booker this week for doing just that).Also, when you feel like the world is nothing but horror, a seven year old crooning “Nothing can break us, no one can make us, give our rights away!!” is at least a little soothing.
Most of all, take care of yourselves out there.
-Sarah
How are you navigating this moment in our country/world as a parent??? Please share!
Also, this:
I went to a writer’s conference last weekend with two other feminist writers and, naturally, we spent most of our time falling down a Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively rabbit hole! Have you seen It Ends With Us???? Is it Feminism 101 or is it reprehensible? And can any woman who has ever been made to feel creeped out by a man (show me a woman who has not) credibly believe Blake was not icked by this guy??? If you want to talk for four hours about this, call me up! Or you can just read ’s great takes on it, or if you want to throw up in your mouth a little bit, watch the 27-minute proposal video Baldoni “directed” for his wife, which is naturally all about him.
Also, I discovered that my friends think this guy, who plays the “good guy” in the movie (who also has serious aggression issues, but, like, for protecting women) is impossibly hot.
I disagree. Is something wrong with me? All I want is Christopher Abbott in a wool sweater, preferably covered in blood (this movie—Bring Them Down—was also insane, but in a completely different way). My kids think I have too many celebrity crushes, often asking me, “Mama, who do you like besides Dada and all the basketball players??” I guess at our house, it’s either ranting about politics or objectifying famous men. There must be worse childhoods, right??
Thanks for continuing to champion my work!! Also, we are a HUGE newsies family, one of my 5 yr olds have an entire ensamble with hat, bag, suspenders etc. we are going to attend the April 5 mass mobilization protest and I explained it to him that we were going to fight for our rights just like the newsies do.
Thank you Sarah for all these thoughts and ideas, for all of us, not just for parents of young kids.