How much about this fucking WAR should I tell my young son?

[odeon]

But OK, my comments on the original post: I sort of agree with Calandale in that he's old enough to be told some not-so-easily explained facts about the war, what happened, and how. Exactly what you tell is really about your values; is it a "good" war or a "bad" war, was it right to do it, is it right to stay, etc. Kids are surprisingly resilient, and while they could easily cry, depending on exactly what they find out about the subject, the crying in itself is a very natural reaction and nothing to be avoided if the matter is serious enough.

Of course, it wouldn't do any good to quote numbers from the Iraq Body Count website or the like, and I see no reason to emphasize just how many people that still get hurt every day, but I'm sure the kid will pick up some of it, eventually, and it's better to have paved the way to that next time when he asks, again, AFTER having watched a news clip or a headline from somewhere and better knows what to ask.

My kids know some things about the war, and inevitably, when they ask, my values come through. And yes, my now 10-yo daughter did cry when she first understood just how serious the situation is, and that so many people do get killed. She was scared and thought that it could happen here, too.

(I wasn't the one to tell her but she has friends at school who apparently know more.)

I told you; it was just my 0.02, and nothing new.

[Calandale]

Maybe let him know that there was never a war anyway.
Just the various armies fighting. It's an interesting way
to bring up the whole US ideal of killing people without
war. At least the Brits declared war on Argentina.

[DirtDawg]

 
Thanks, Odeon, I am glad to have your comments, as always and your thinking is along the same lines as mine, although the events of the day seemed to compress the timetable. We talked a good bit more as the day progressed. I gave him a lot to think about. I went to several sites to get pictures and more info in graphic and text form for him, when I was supposedly "in the chatroom with the boys" and we talked even more.  I hope I haven't given the impression that my son is naive, because he certainly is not, for an eight year old, even though we had only barely touched the subject of war.

He has a good basis of how our system is SUPPOSED to work. He understands "things and stuff", just fine, but he has a tough time understanding many of the things that "people" do. What made me stop breathing, this morning, was the innocence and confidence with which he presented his little propaganda, 'war is over' speech, more than anything else and I completely  had not seen this coming. I am the one who is naive. I just thought I had a little more time to sort through these issues, one on one with him, before they started programming him in the fucking second grade.

BTW, I was actually kidding about feeling cheated bit. The absurdity of that was intended to amuse you, not make you feel you had a lever under your arse.

[Litigious]

You did start an interesting topic. I started reading and thinking about it, and got stopped in my tracks by Lit's turning it all into another blame-it-on-the-cowardly-Swedes rant. Sorry. 

What did the left wing cowards in the parliament say when the Yanks as only country dared to try stopping the killing in Yugoslavia? Did they say "Hurrah, America is going to stop the killing in Yugoslavia, since we Europeans are too much of pussies to do it ourselves"?

No. They condemned the US. As usual. Who the fuck is Sweden to condemn and speak morals to other countries? Sweden let Nazi Germany send troops through our country during WWII. Sweden sent refugees from the Baltic states back to the Soviet Union after WWII, on Soviet demands, to death or slave labor camps. Sweden is one of the or the most cowardly country on this planet. Swedish authorities and politicians act like Big Brother or KGB towards their own citizens but lick foreign countries arses, if they're more powerful.

[Scrapheap]

Sweden condemned the US for going into Bosnia ??

[Litigious]

Sweden condemned the US for going into Bosnia ??

Not all parties, but the lefties did, of course.

[Litigious]

The communists (they don't call themselves that anymore, but in my opinion they are) and environment party would in principle condemn anything America did, no matter what. 

[odeon]

Sweden condemned the US for going into Bosnia ??

Not all parties, but the lefties did, of course.

I'm not a lefty but I condemned that war because once again, the media painted a picture that was very different from the truth. I never saw the Serbs as the only bad guys around but at the time, that was the PC view.

[odeon]

Thanks, Odeon, I am glad to have your comments, as always and your thinking is along the same lines as mine, although the events of the day seemed to compress the timetable. We talked a good bit more as the day progressed. I gave him a lot to think about. I went to several sites to get pictures and more info in graphic and text form for him, when I was supposedly "in the chatroom with the boys" and we talked even more.  I hope I haven't given the impression that my son is naive, because he certainly is not, for an eight year old, even though we had only barely touched the subject of war.

DD, in my opinion, children are seldom naive. They're young and inexperienced, but there is often a clarity in their thinking that disappears, somehow, later in life. 

BTW, I was actually kidding about feeling cheated bit. The absurdity of that was intended to amuse you, not make you feel you had a lever under your arse.

Oh.  

[Nomaken]

Tell him that there are a lot of stupid people, and we've made a whole bunch of mistakes, and people have thought about why this happens and how to fix it for about as long as they've been capable of it, and for the most part the only thing you can do is grit your teeth and bear it, however people will respect you more if you figure out how you can help out, even if it is in a small way, and do it.

Researching the source of human stupidity will teach him everything else.

[DirtDawg]

Tell him that there are a lot of stupid people, and we've made a whole bunch of mistakes, and people have thought about why this happens and how to fix it for about as long as they've been capable of it, and for the most part the only thing you can do is grit your teeth and bear it, however people will respect you more if you figure out how you can help out, even if it is in a small way, and do it.

Like we're helping out in Iraq, right?
(I don't really get your meaning)

Researching the source of human stupidity will teach him everything else.

This is actually fairly clever, even "rounded off" and oversimplified this way.

[Nomaken]

Most help people are capable of individually wont significantly help what ever cause they are contributing to.  So appealing to a persons desire to be considered at least not part of the problem will more likely get them to do the small bit of help they are capable of.

[rjgwood]

Hi Calamity,

It really is frustring when you feel that your child is being taught by simpletons, isn't it? 

My recommendation to you would be to probe the intelligence that your son already has about the war...what makes you think the war is over?  etc. and try to see within what context his information is framed.  We know the war is not over, the men and women who are there still fighting know the war is not over...so when he answers (it may be something like "We were shown a picture of Geo. Bush on a ship with a sign that says 'Mission Accomplished.'")  you can ask him follow-up questions, like why do you think the war is over? And so forth.  These questions will serve several functions:  1)  They will give you an understanding of his knowledge base of the issue and what he is being taught.  2)  They will give you some indication of the political ideology of his teachers/school.  3)  They will teach your son, implicity, to question his own basis of knowledge and to question what he is intellectually fed by others...teach him to be a critical thinker...

Rhonda

[richard]

do any of you have kids that are giving dirtdawg advice?

[Calandale]

I effectively am a child, so
I guess that should qualify.

Most of the others seem to
be giving their own advice,
rather than soliciting it from
their children