Lindsay Hanson Metcalf: How to talk to your kids about terrorism

I am struggling.

I am struggling to find words to explain to my boys what happened in Paris and Beirut.

How do I explain why mommy is weeping at her computer? How do I explain the horrors to a 4- and a near-6-year-old who are glued to “My Little Pony” in the next room?

“Why are people dying, Mommy?” the older one asked.

I told them that bad people in this world do bad things. But that’s not a real answer.

They don’t need to, nor should they, know all the details, but they need to know more than that. And with events like these, they needed to know from parents and loved ones before they went back to school, church or a restaurant where newspaper racks screamed about the massacre.

My oldest has a fear of bad guys. He made them a glittery, purple sign out of Scrabble tiles and hung it face-out in his second-story window. “No bad guys allowed,” it decrees.

Bad guys, to him, are the nebulous abductors he’s heard will offer you candy and pull you into their van.

The fear is trickling down to my youngest. Neither one will play in the backyard without an adult, even for a second. They think bad guys will snatch them while I’m not looking.

They need to know that where we live, in the middle of Kansas, we’ve never seen the likes of these bad guys.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says we should shield young children from graphic images and details. That means turning off the TV, news radio and Twitter.

The academy says that with older children who can handle the news, DVR it and preview before you pass it on. Watch alongside them, and pause occasionally to discuss.

I want to tell my kids about terrorism without traumatizing them or stripping away their hope. I want them to remember Mr. Rogers’ quote, which always circulates after a terrorist attack and instills hope in me:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ ”

There are plenty of books about the helpers.

At the library, I’ve reserved a 2005 picture book called “Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of John J. Harvey,” by Maira Kalman. It’s about one of the many heroes from 9/11, an old fireboat that had been decommissioned but was called back to help battle the flames.

Amazon has a few other highly rated titles with messages of hope:

▪ “The Survivor Tree: Inspired by a True Story,” by Cheryl Somers Aubin. Ground Zero cleanup workers discovered a bedraggled tree and nursed it back to health. Now the tree is back at the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, with new shoots climbing from the scars. This title offers parallels when talking about surviving tragic events.

▪ “The Little Chapel That Stood,” by A. B. Curtiss. An 18th century chapel near the World Trade Center served as a holding spot for firefighters to hang their shoes when they changed to boots and ran to help. The chapel survived, but some of the owners never returned for their shoes.

▪ “On That Day: A Book of Hope for Children,” by Andrea Patel. This Reading Rainbow book moves the discussion past the event and asks, “What can we do when bad things happen?”

None of these books addresses ISIS specifically. None talks about the war in Syria, or the children washing up on the shores of Europe or the attacks in Paris, Beirut and beyond. But they give us a starting point to open up an honest discussion about war in a modern context.

Children deserve that.

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 8:40 AM with the headline "Lindsay Hanson Metcalf: How to talk to your kids about terrorism."