Tell me what you really think.
AMEN! She might have done it out of love and the desire to protect you, but Lord, what a way for a child to spend the day. I can just imagine what ran through your mind. I would have gone crazy. That's too bad - but it taught you a lesson about how not to handle a crisis.
I was teaching in the middle school on 9/11 and we, too, were supposed to keep those events from our kids. Of course, rumors were circulating wildly -- among us as well as the kids. Without any discussion at all, the faculty decided that we had "not gotten the word" from downtown.
We combined classes distributed TVs and watched the news (not the 6th grades who were on a different floor and who really were a lot younger). We were able to talk with the kids about what was happening and to assess the risk of our city being a target and how the government was organized to deal with disasters and . . .
It was lots better for them to have the guidance and safety of adults who cared for them to help them deal with the horror of that day than to be supject to the wild rumors that would have controlled the school if we teachers had done what we were told to do.
I am sad that your principal knew no other way to handle this situation. I am more sad that no one thought to talk to you about it when you were finally with family.
On 9/11 my para stepped out between classes for her break and returned with the news. I had to wait an hour and a half through third grade LIteracy to find out what was going on. By the end of the day all our students had been told something sad had happened to America (we are K-6, so it was varying degrees of explaining), we even had some parents come and take kids home (we live in Rural Vermont, I am not sure what they were thinking). I don't know why we must keep things from our children, they understand a lot more than they are often given credit for.
Coming from a country that treated all its citizens this way, adults and children alike, I could not agree more.
You are spot-on with this one, Mamacita. It's much worse on kids (well anybody really) knowing that something "bad" is going on but not knowing what that something is. That feeling of fear of the unknown is much worse than knowing and having it explained in terms we can understand.
Wow. That is horrifying.
Because I was shielded from a lot of stuff growing up, although I didn't realize it at the time, I was surprised to see how much kids are able to handle at young ages. My children (11, 10, & 3) are open about, and ask questions about things that I never would have even known about when I was their age. It was never anything I *strove* to accomplish while raising them, I just respected them and did my best to answer their questions as honestly and age-appropriately as possible. And I am proud of where it has taken them.
I'm 100% behind you on this one...the NOT-knowing is anxiety inducing, even to me as an adult.
I agree that children shouldn't be shielded from hearing about bad things, but it's crucial that to handle it correctly.
My son had a horrible third grade year as a result of upsetting news being handled incorrectly by the administration at his school. For my anxiety prone kid, the way this news was handled made him so anxious about being away from us, that he absolutely refused to go to school. It was a difficult year on all of us.
Mamacita, I can see why that remains firmly implanted in your memory! Sometimes adults forget that kids are people, I think. For heaven's sake, who could take that without feeling tortured? Very sad about your grandfather too!
I have always maintained that when you try to keep secrets from children, they imagine something often WAY worse than the truth. In your case, this was a terrible thing, but I agree that you would have been less traumatized had you just been told what happened. You could have dealt with it in a healthy way instead of being left alone, confused, with your thoughts for hours.
Ugh. So sorry for you!
You are more generous than I would be. I can't imagine sitting there all day...wondering.
That would have scared the bejeezus out of me. And how tragic what happened to Papaw.
I had just moved from the middle school to the high school on September 11. We were allowed to keep the tvs on. It was the most powerful lesson that I will ever be a part of.
Strangely enough, we had been talking the day before about xenophobia and immigration policy during my current events part of the day (Bush had planned to announce a change to the immigration policy vis a vis Mexico) and during the history part of the day we had been discussing the Bessemer process and how it made skyscrapers possible. Both topics interected in a completely bizarre way on September 11.
The students I have now were shielded from the news that day, and they still resent it.
On 9/11 my elementary school was the only one in the county that allowed it's teachers to show the news and talk about what happened. We are a military community - one that had a genuine worry about being a target area. Kids went home to find that their parents had been called to duty - many didn't return for weeks or months. Over half of the kids were checked out of school by the end of the day.
The kids needed to know what was going on.
I agree with the other poster that it was the most powerful teaching I have every done.
I have always felt it was best to honest with kids and not try to shield them from the world - kids fear the unknown more than anything else.
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