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I am having to totally relearn how to think about world events, and I’m not sure I’m doing a great job at it.
I don’t even remember many world events from my childhood.
This is probably a combination of me growing up in an isolated town in Alaska with only two television channels, and my parents knowing I was a sensitive kid who would struggle to process tragedy.
Whatever news I did hear, the coping mechanism was always the same: pray for God to help the people there, and hope and beg for God to hurry the day when every tear will be wiped, the lion will lay down with the lamb, and the peace of God will reign on earth.
By the time I got to adulthood, the only way I knew how to deal with tragedy was with my Christian beliefs.
Now that I have children of my own who don’t believe in a God who will fix everything, I’m having to start from scratch in how I parent them—and myself—through events like what’s happening in Palestine right now.
There’s a lot to discern as a person and a parent in figuring out WHAT to tell my kids about what’s happening in Gaza, and the internet is a great place to hear from child development experts on that.
But coming out of my background, it’s also critical to me to consider HOW I talk to my kids about Gaza, to set them up with a healthy approach to living well in a world where bad things happen.
Here’s what I don’t want to do:
I don’t want to lean too far into protecting my kids from the hard things of the world, so that they grow up thinking that tragedy is always someone else’s problem and don’t learn empathy and responsible citizenship.
But I also don’t want to lean too far the other way, like I did in college and young adulthood, and barrage my kids with so many terrible stories and pleas for sympathy that they feel guilty about their lives, with constant anxiety and shame about what they aren’t doing to change the world.
As much as I’ve changed in the last few years, I still fight the urge to persuade my kids and form their souls using the same indoctrination methods that religion used on me…. And I so badly don’t want to do that.
I’m building the plane as I’m flying, I have a LOT of divesting still to do, and I am no expert, BUT:
If you want to see the honest processing of a white, post-evangelical woman trying to figure out how she talks to herself and her kids about what’s happening on the other side of the world, (and the resources she’s using to do it), keep reading.
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My kids, like all kids, can sound like entitled spoiled brats from time to time.
I get frustrated when I know how much they have, and their attitudes just plain suck. I think this is par for the course of good parenting, right? It’s important to teach them perspective and foster thankfulness, and in doing so remind myself the same.
But sometimes when I’m trying to “give them perspective,” I feel this self-righteous monster rise up in me—I recognize her from days gone by—who sprinkles a little extra shame on my words.
As much as I use all my therapy tricks to welcome her and thank her and honor how she has tried to protect me, she’s not who I want to parent my kids.
So while I try to figure out how to talk to my kids about Gaza, I’m trying to figure out how to do it without my default tactic of shame. Here are some of the things I feel the urge to say and what I’m trying out instead.
Cycle to Break #1: Bringing up other people’s misfortunes as a way to shame them into gratitude.
I have 100% told my kids, when they’re complaining about dinner, that there are starving children in the world and that they should feel lucky to get to fill their tummies. (I was convicted on this when my husband, bless his heart, made me a bowl of tortellini that was somehow both overcooked and still cold, with a hint of mold in the sauce, and realized I would complain if I had amateur cooks choosing and preparing every meal for me, too).
It’s tempting to bring up crises when I want to combat their bad attitudes. Oh you only got to play MarioKart for one hour? Well be glad your city isn’t being bombed. Oh you think it’s annoying that I keep telling you to put your shoes away? At least you still have a home where you can keep your shoes that you also have.
But weaponizing privilege to modify behavior only sets them up to associate hearing about tragedy with feelings of guilt and shame, which leads to resentment. This doesn’t sound like the path toward growing well-adjusted, compassionate kids, nor does it sound like a pattern I want to perpetuate in my own mind.
After growing up with a worldview that connected everything, global and personal, back to a single story and ethic, I want to be better about practicing some good boundaries and separation between topics.
Parenting their attitudes is one thing, and informing them about world events to give them perspective is another. Maybe they don’t always only get talked about at the same time.
Cycle to Break #2: Enforcing my sense of morality onto them instead of letting theirs grow organically.
Indoctrination assumes to know The Truth and The Right and The Wrong, and spells it out in painstaking detail.
Indoctrinated kids don’t learn how to discern; they learn how to memorize and perform.
I want more than this for my kids, and I want to break free from these tendencies myself.
Because I do have these tendencies.
With indoctrination as the language I learned in every Sunday School lass, Christian book, Bible camp and youth group, it’s my default way to speak when we talk about Gaza or other crises.
But instead of being afraid of them going to hell unless they pray the sinner’s prayer, I’m now afraid of them growing up to be sleepy, entitled, privileged and complicit Americans (or let’s face it… what I’m really afraid of is people judging me for raising sleepy, entitled, privileged, and complicit Americans).
Left unchecked, I have found myself forcing unnatural conversations, bringing up world events more often than is probably wise, and basically being as awkward as I was when I was trying to get them excited about the Bible when they were toddlers.
But when I take a step back and see these alarming parallels, I realize that I don’t want them to be good little soldiers for progressivism any more than I want them to be good little soldiers for Jesus.
My compulsive need to turn every conversation into a sermon, to make every free afternoon a missed opportunity to help those in need, to make every toy purchase a selfish endeavor that could have fed a hungry child, is probably doing more harm than good to their innate conscience.
I want them to learn how to find their own compassion, to listen to it and empower it, so that they can start off with an organic sense of justice instead of just copycatting mine.
In the last few weeks in particular, I’ve tried to step back from over-talking about stuff, and instead have simply shared information about the situation when it’s naturally occurring to me. “I am crying because I saw a story about a mom in Gaza who can’t feed her kids, and here I am eating lunch with you guys like it’s no big deal. It makes me feel grateful for this food, and also really sad for that family.” Then I’m telling myself to zip it until they ask questions (for reference, my kids are 7 and 9, so we are starting to be able to broach more complex and difficult topics with them).
Letting your kids lead the conversation with their curiosity is advice I’m seeing repeated across multiple articles on the topic (a few are shared below).
As we talked over that same lunch, they did have questions about what’s happening. I shared more about the history of the conflict and how people they know strongly disagree with each other about what America should do about it. They suggested that at our neighborhood garage sale in April, we should sell our old stuff and baked goods and donate the profits to supporting causes like World Central Kitchen that are feeding hungry families in both Israel and Gaza.
My anxious activism wants to tell them it’s too little and too late… but that’s my baggage and would squash their sprouting convictions. So I’m going to support them, stay open without getting too weird, and do something myself sooner (like donate a portion of my income from Substack this month).
Cycle to Break #3: Performing morality for the sake of others.
Sometimes I find myself sneaking a cookie in the kitchen when my kids are in the other room. Part of it is because I want to eat a cookie in peace without my people asking me if they can also have one, but part of it is because I have in my head that I want to “model” healthy eating and that I should hide my “less-healthy” choices (let’s put a pin in talking about food fundamentalism for another day).
I did this a lot as a Christian, and I think we collectively did this as Christians, and may still do this even as we’ve stepped a bit away from our stricter devotion days. The “appearance of evil” was a big deal because we didn’t want to give God a bad rap and in doing so discourage people from saying yes to him.
But you and I both know that this didn’t really do much to advance character development, it just made us good at hiding stuff. If anyone was attracted to God by our performance, they were surely let down by the reality once they discovered becoming a Christian doesn’t instantly change who you are.
I don’t just want my kids to grow organic compassion, like I said in the last point, but I want to nurture organic compassion in myself, and model what it actually looks like to be honest and imperfect and messy behind the scenes.
I have to believe that seeing me do the work of trying to figure out how to be a global citizen is more valuable than seeing me perform what I think the perfect global citizen would do.
For me, this means a lot of internal work before I even start to talk to them.
The hardest part for me of showing up to world issues has been realizing just how wired I am to find my motivation for being a good person in the approval of others.
As I’m coming out of my white evangelical slumber and bumbling around issues like racism, ableism, and America’s impact on the world, it can be a rude awakening when not everyone around me is gentle and patient with my process of unpacking the ugliness.
I’ve felt shocked at the harsh response to my genuine questions at times, even as I learn later exactly why the way I phrased a question triggered such a response and betrayed my ignorance.
Because I associate harsh response with me doing something wrong that I need to stop, it can feel like oh… I need to stop processing all this because I’m hurting people.
But then, I stop doing the work.
I’ve realized that as much as I want to learn from others and be changed by hearing someone else’s perspective, I’m the only one who can take ownership of my moral words and actions.
Every person is entitled to their opinion of me, but everyone’s opinion of me should not have authority over how I do the work of showing up.
I have to own that my process will be too slow and too late for some people, that the process of me asking ignorant questions in order to do better will be too frustrating and painful for some people to walk with me through, that the way I talk about things will always sound too white and too American for some people because I will always be a White American.
But if I’m going to move forward, I have to own where I am, and do my best, even if the people I’m trying to love and support don’t agree with every part of my process.
When it comes to parenting, I have to give my kids the same space too. I’m in this for the long game with them, which means I would so much rather be their cheerleader and trusted guide as they learn to discern their own privilege and responsibility, than be the voice of shame and admonition in their heads confusing them when they’re trying to heed their own consciences.
It’s a mess, right? But I’m here, and I’m working on it, slow and steady as it may be. Sending solidarity to all you out there doing it, too.
RESOURCES
The work I’ve done to write this article has been educational and compelling, and my understanding of the history, complexity, and context of the conflict has increased exponentially. There is no easy fix to the broader issues at hand, but there are immediate humanitarian needs we can support. Here are some resources to support you in your own education, parenting and activism.
For Americans:
Your representative’s phone number
What does calling congress actually achieve? (New Yorker article… not terribly encouraging, but good to know)
Prompt to help you know what to say (not recommended to submit via this website, though)
List of bills currently in congress (whoa… how do any of them ever get passed.)
For Parents:
This video for Muslim parents on how to talk to kids about Gaza
This NPR article on how to talk to your kids about peace (one of many… Google for lots of good wisdom)
This list of childrens books to educate about the culture and history of Palestine
This expert-backed article by Melinda Wenner Moyer on how to talk to kids about Israel + Gaza with links to other experts
For Kids:
This video explaining the history of Gaza in kid-appropriate language
This free peace sculpture project that can give kids a kinetic way to process their wishes for peace
This read aloud of Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine, offering windows into Palestinian culture and heritage.
On-the-ground reporting from Palestine:
NGOs providing humanitarian aid:
Anera (longstanding charity that has experience getting aid into Palestine)