Early in the morning, as school was just beginning, one of my students came up to me. She started telling me about something that had happened, “in a big city, when bad people hit a building. Fire people, police went in to help. The buildings fell down and lots of people died. My mommy told me.”
My student looked at me intently as she told me this news.
She is four years old…
I was as taken aback as I’ve ever been. My eyes and throat instantly filled with tears. I looked her straight in the eyes, and answered the best I could without breaking down, “Yes, I know. I remember that!” And then went silent, to see what she would say or do next.
She told me all over again about the people who ran into the buildings, and that the buildings fell down, and that a lot of people died. I said, “Yes, many of them died. But the fire people and police helped a lot of people to live. They were very, very brave.”
That was enough for her. And as much as I could manage.
She moved on to play elsewhere in the room while I stood there, swallowing my tears. Remembering 16 years ago, and thinking how deeply moved and grateful I was that her mother had taken the time to explain about 9/11 to her child. Not hiding it, not denying it–just letting her child know that such things had happened.
Quite young children can handle things like this, if explained clearly. They are not derailed by complicated emotions and opinions. This little girl’s mother gave her an invaluable gift: the gift of knowledge. As she grows older, she can build on the basic facts of 9/11, and learn more and more about that time of grief–and, yes, faith, courage, and strength.
I hope I did my part, as her teacher, to give her the words “very, very brave”, and that the “fire people and police” helped others to live. She will remember the conversation with her mother, and hopefully the one with me. She will have important history in her heart.
Tell your children what happened. Never forget.
h/t “out of the mouth of babies and children…”
DAVID LETTERMAN SHOW OPENING: SEPTEMBER 10th 2001.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=mn50_1599793298
“From New York, the mysterious TRIANGLE where hundreds of ships and PLANES have vanished.
Triangle is illuminati reference.
Planes have vanished is plane that vanished into World Trade Center.
On Sept 10th my employer’s travel agency booked my flights to/from the Netherlands for a trip scheduled for a month later. They, of course, had to call me back three days later because some of the scheduled connecting flights coming home no longer existed. My son was just over five years old.
On the morning of Sept 11th I started my work day at home. But I had the TV on monitoring the morning TV news reports that where still speculating how a small plane could have flown into the North WTC tower.
A few minutes before 09:00 I called the company service center, that had a year earlier moved from Shelton, Ct. to Bothell, Washington. While I was talking to one of the girls there I saw the second plane fly into the South tower. It became clear the first plane was no accident. I asked her if they were allowed to listen to a radio or if they could see a television morning news show. She said no. I told her something big and terrible was happening in NYC, and they should find a news report asap.
A few weeks later I flew to the Netherlands. I expected the flight from Cleveland to Amsterdam to be mostly empty.
But surprise, it wasn’t. The flight was packed with mostly dark skinned people. Not what I expected. Only when nearing Amsterdam did I learn it was not a flight from Cleveland to Amsterdam. It was actually a flight from Cleveland to Bombay (Mumbai) India. Amsterdam was just an intermediate stop.
The return flight home two weeks later however, was what I expected. There were only two people in the entire section of the 747 where I was seated. Me and another guy who had been one of my classmates at the company training center.
Some of my fellow employees who happened to be in the Netherlands when the attacks happened ended up having a longer stay in the Netherlands than planned. Some were funneled into additional training classes if possible, or they just had paid time off in Holland.
Common Core and liberalism won’t allow it. They control your children’s destiny now.
RIP Keith McHeffey 9/11/01 south tower. His mom Sherry was the department secretary for my wife when she worked at Monmouth U in NJ. She was also at our wedding in 1996. He died with so many others at Cantor Fitzgerald. We will never forget their names.
I spent a half a day at the World Trade Center Memorial and Museum during my last trip to New York City. It’s an unforgettable experience. If things aren’t straightened out, someday there will be another Memorial and Museum dedicated to other lives lost to Islamic Terrorism in another American city.
Geoff was already up early that morning having coffee and the little tv was on in the kitchen. Our daughter was still asleep in her bed as I paased her bedroom and came downstairs. She was just starting first grade that fall.
It was the most spectacular kind of September morning. The skies in Seattle were cloudless, breath-takingly blue.
The day ahead held nothing but contented potential. It was the last ordinary early morning in America. Only a few minutes later all of our worlds would be changed forever.
When our baby came downstairs for breakfast, the tv was off and we did and said nothing about the matter. There was no way in hell I was going to expose her to that horror. And I quite disagree with the idea that a four year-old (or young children, in general) can cope with the idea of planes intentionally flying into buildings or big buildings falling down or people dying by the hundreds all at once because some bad people did some very bad things to people they didn’t know.
I know adults who had a hard time coping. As naturally stoic as I am, I had a difficult time. I wasn’t going to let those terrible things into the life of my child and unnecessarily rob her of her innocence. I wasn’t going to inculcate her with the fear that terrifying things could happen at any time to her. She would have plenty of life ahead to discover that “truth.”
Why would anyone sit a four year-old down and explain the facts of something so horrfying — even in four year-old-ese? A child that young, no matter how precocious, will probably never have a memory of the event, but will always remember the fear and anxiety of it because the most important big person in their life felt the need for them to know.
I can’t even think of the right words to say about this. But I do know that it’s just wrong not to protect tender, young hearts from as much evil as we can until those children can at least experience something of the world and in the natural order of their development that can prepare them for it. There’s so much out there we can’t control that our children are exposed to. I’ll bet the four year-olds mum probably also told her baby there’s no Santa Claus either.
I get the moral of this writer’s “poignant” story. It’s not lost on me.
@AbigailAdams — Offering the mother the benefit of the doubt, perhaps the little girl had seen or heard something about the 9/11 attack and asked Mom about it. Mom then had to do the best she could to answer her and explain.
Thank you, @Uncle Al. That is what happened. (This incident occurred 16 years after 9/11.)
The little girl’s father is a police officer; when she asked about what she had heard, her mother took the opportunity to explain things truthfully to her, at a level she could accept and understand.
The teacher in this story had no control over what the child saw or heard. She just responded to what the child told her. By focusing on the good that was done that day, it satisfied the child.
Lesson: give children hope.
http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/2016/04/dont-miss-this-heart-warming-story.html
Just Imagine this and other stories…most of us have no idea.