Erin: There are times when we can scarcely believe what humans are capable of doing to each other. When we catch a glimpse of videos showing the violence of war in somewhere like Syria, we want to squeeze our eyes tight, and shut out the images. And in that moment, we perhaps forget that we aren’t the only ones watching and hearing these stories. 

The young people in our lives are absorbing everything around them. 

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In this episode, we’ll talk with a clinical therapist Alyson Schafer about how to talk to children about very real, very scary topics, like violence and war. We’ll hear from my friend and co-worker Wendy Russ, who has spent the better part of twenty years raising her kids in very intentional ways. 

But first, here’s Jessica and Jeremy Courtney. They founded Preemptive Love eleven year ago and, as you heard in episode 1, have been raising their two kids here in Iraq. 

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For Jessica and Jeremy, they, along with millions of families in Iraq, faced the task of talking about war close to home when ISIS burst onto the scene in a public way. I asked the Courtneys how they broached the very real issue of war with their children. 

Jessica: We talked about it. We talked about the war as it came, as we learned about it with the kids. When the war started, our children were small, and talking to them at that time and then talking to them five years later, it does look different. And the details that we talked about are different because their brains are different. And they’re thinking really differently than they were before. At the beginning, we were talking about friends who had been forced out of their homes, we were talking about an army coming into their city, but at the same time they’re seeing the news. And as much as even if we don’t let them watch the news, they can access it in so many other ways. 

It was just good for us to be as clear as possible with them and continue to ask them to tell us what they think. And that’s something that we still try and do with them is when a topic comes up, we asked them Well, what do you think about that? Well, what are you hearing about that? And find out? Where are their hearts in this? And how much information do they have. And let that frame a bit of what our conversation is, 

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Jessica: It wasn’t always easy. And we didn’t always know what to say. We just knew we had to talk about things as they came up. So sometimes it means, over the dinner table, bringing the kids into the conversations that we’re having, and asking them what they think and what they would do in certain situations, how they would feel in certain situations and let them letting them be a part of the solution, I think has been really key to them feeling safe, over the last five years of war here. 

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Jeremy Courtney: I would guess it not a week goes by that Jessica and I are not engaged in a conversation already in progress. And one of the kids will pipe up. And then they’ll basically quote, what amounts to a headline news, you know, the headline of a news article that they saw when they open their browser. And the number of times that one of them clicks through to actually read an adult article about the news is, is interesting. And the times that they don’t click through, but they’re still absorbing information through the headline and the deck is significant. 

And it’s important that we be able to say one of two things. Here’s a little more information on that. Here’s the framework we used to think and navigate that or I don’t know, it’s okay for us to say I don’t know, I can look into it. Why don’t you look into it and report back to us. Like we’ve we’ve tried different ways we approach it different ways. But we try not to try not to posture and fool them into thinking that, that we know what’s going on when we don’t. And that means that when we do dare put a stake in the ground on something, it matters, it matters a lot for them. And they now know this is who we are. 

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Erin: To be able to say I don’t know? It takes a lot of humility, whether you’re talking to a child or an adult. And while Jeremy and Jessica make space for unknowns, there’s one thing they feel pretty strongly about… 

Jessica: Sometimes we end the dinner conversation, having disagreed about how we feel about something. But the one thing that we always do guard against is posture. And so it’s not okay in our conversations for us to vilify anyone, not ISIS, not political figures. It we can be as expressive as we need to be, to try and communicate how we’re feeling about something, we can be angry, we can yell, we can be sad, we can cry, we can be happy and laughing everything is accepted for us unless you have a posture that is shaming someone else or vilifying someone else. And then someone around the table and the kids do it to us to is someone around the table will say, but you don’t know, you don’t know what their experiences. You don’t know where they came from. Maybe they’re not evil. Maybe they made some bad decisions, some really bad decisions. Yes. Is it okay, some of the behavior, no, but we’re still not going to turn human beings into monsters to prove a point. And so for us, whatever you’re thinking, and the moment is great, let’s just be careful about our posture towards other people. And make sure that we are being honoring in the way that we talk about people. 

Jeremy: Partly because we don’t ever want to close the door. I mean, one of the core things that we believe as a family is that people can change. And so we don’t ever want to close the door for people leaving behind their pain, leaving behind their trauma. When any one of us, me included, moves toward vilifying language, what we mean by that is turning people into animals, turning people into monsters. It’s not simply a matter of good versus bad or good versus evil. 

But animals don’t become people and monsters don’t turn into people. Like we don’t believe in that kind of transformation. We do believe that bad people can become better people. And we believe that whatever good we see in ourselves today, we could lose that and we could become worse as well. 

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Erin: Here in Iraq, children are included in every aspect of family life. 

Jessica: I think we get to these conversations quickly with our children, because we live in a place that doesn’t guard conversation, or protect children from conversation. So if it’s a super scary movie, on TV, everyone who’s in the room is just watching the movie, there’s no way there’s not this idea that a four-year-old shouldn’t be taking this in because the reality is whatever’s on TV isn’t nearly as scary as what that four-year-old has probably lived through. And so when we are at friends houses for dinner, our children have always been and continue to be included in the conversations that are happening. And those conversations aren’t determined by who’s sitting at the table. They’re determined by the needs and the feelings of those who are sitting around the table. 

What I have found is the natural conversation, the conversations that come up naturally throughout life are much easier to talk about than the conversations that we try and plan around and sit down and talk about. 

Jeremy: One of the things that we’ve learned living in Iraq is the degree to which Jess and I and a lot of our friends grew up in an environment where we could afford to say, we don’t talk about politics. It’s just too charged. It’s just too divisive. We, it was okay for us to cordon off politics from our life because we were generally just going to keep doing okay. 

So coming into this culture, seeing children and everyone just making sport of politics. I mean, politics are something that you discuss over dinner here every night. Because you can’t, you can’t afford not to. You can’t afford, you can’t close it away in a corner and just hope that you’re going to be okay. 

Jessica: And there are families all over the world who don’t have that option of guarding their kids from those conversations. 

These are the kind of people we want to be, these are the values that we hold dear. And we’re going to keep stepping every day into those values. And we’re bringing the kids along with us. So it doesn’t matter if they’re 18 months or 18 years old, we want to be side by side, hand in hand with him walking towards becoming the people that we want to be. And that means that conversations that seem like they might be really hard actually come along more naturally, because we’re experiencing similar things together. 

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Erin: We’ll be right back. 

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Alyson: I’m Alyson Schafer. I’m a parenting expert. And I practice that here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 

Erin: Alyson Schafer not only has a clinical practice in Toronto, but she also works internationally with a lot of families who, just like you and the families you know, want to do good by their kids. 

The families that I know here in Iraq–Iraqi families, Syrian families, even the expat families who live here–they’ve been through some extremely hard things in their lives. They’ve been through war, displacement, and more. It’s easy for each of us tell ourselves that the hard things happen somewhere else, to other people. And that’s really not true. They happen everywhere. To families just like ours. 

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Alyson: I think what parents need to appreciate is that, whether or not we have discussions and dialogues and help the communications with our kids around hard topics, our children are still always making sense of their world. They can’t not come up with some thought or conclusion or emotional response to what’s happening in their environment. 

So I think we really have a responsibility to help co-process, with our kids in a developmental way, what they’re experiencing in life. And even though I appreciate that we might want to protect them and shelter them from hard things, they’re very astute observers. So they’re looking with their eyes on what’s on TVs in the background, they’re listening to their parents talk to shopkeepers and neighbors as they’re going through their daily activities. They are aware of what’s happening. And unfortunately, because the child’s mind is egocentric by nature, and not mature, it comes often to erroneous conclusions about what’s happening. 

Erin: So, what do we do? I asked Alyson. 

Alyson: We would do kids a much better service by opening the door to dialogue. To ask them, what are they understanding? What did they think, what do they feel, so that we can help correct and give a healthier narrative to what’s going on, even when what we’re talking about are difficult things like displacement, and terrorism, and poverty and racism and all those things. Kids are still coming up with their own three- and five- and 10-year old version of it that can not always be helpful to them. 

Erin: Common Sense Media sponsored a survey looking into the ways children consume media. 70 percent of children said that consuming news made them feel smart and knowledgeable. Fully half of the children surveyed said that following the news helps them feel prepared to make a difference in their communities. What did they list as news sources? First on the list was family—their most trusted news source. Then teachers and friends. Next? Social media apps. But family still comes out on top. 

Alyson: I think even just asking parents to take on a curiosity, style dialogue. So you might say, Hey, I know, there was something big that happened on the news about a bombing, and I’m just wondering if you heard about it, and what you know about it. And then the child will be able to share their factual part about it. And that gives us the opportunity then, to correct the facts. 

And then, and always in a sensitive, age-appropriate way. We don’t need to tell our children everything, but neither do we need to lie to them, or clean it up. But I’m okay with sort of the error of omission is all right, so just enough facts, so that we can guide them towards a more truthful understanding. But we can be very, very limited in what we say, and very simplistic, and what we say, but we still need to be truthful in what we say. 

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And then we can ask for some of those feelings. And how are you feeling about that? Or does that make you scared or, you know, anything that goes down to kind of that emotional content? And you know, what would you need from me in order to feel safe or understand more? 

Erin: Questions. Questions that create an open space, free from judgment. No preaching, just curiosity about how this child sees the world where they are right now, at this age, and in this place. 

Alyson: Young kids still have this magical thinking that they’re sort of the center of the universe. Not in an entitled way, I just mean, the way their brain is organized, you know, they can think something like, well, I told a lie yesterday, and then grandma had a heart attack, I must have caused that. Right. And it’s like, that’s not true at all. But these are the mistaken ways that kids can connect the dots between events. 

And so if we don’t help them open up and share that, then we don’t get the opportunity to say no, no, no, that’s not true at all. Grandma was ill for a while. And that’s not how hearts work. And that had nothing to do with it. 

Otherwise, kids can walk around with terrible guilt and shame and feelings of powerlessness, that are very unhealthy. So we won’t know those things unless we make the space for them to talk. 

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Erin: We talk a lot about listening being at the core of everything we do at Preemptive Love. Listening is really at the core of every healthy relationship, including those with our children. When we provide a safe space and listen, we can validate a child’s feelings and offer comfort to them. 

Alyson: If every time you speak up, and you say, “Well, I’m scared because things are happening in our community”. And if you say there’s nothing to be afraid of, you know, you’re safe, we’re fine. It might feel like you’re being protected. But what we’re really saying to the kid is that your feelings aren’t valid, and you’re wrong. And I know they’re less likely to talk, then if we take that approach. And I get why we do it. It feels so like, we want them to think safe thoughts, but it doesn’t actually help in the long run because it shuts down communication. 

Erin: I asked Alyson if there are things we can do to maintain an opening for conversation, right from the moment a child experiences trauma. 

Alyson: Well, I would say that when kids have had trauma of any kind, and parents can usually tell when something traumatic has happened. I would use a broad definition for trauma there. I mean, there’s the ones that obviously, any one of us would clarify. But you know, traumas traumas can be small for kids traumas can be, you know, I was lost for 15 minutes, and I did or my parents were and you know, when you’re too that’s traumatic, because you’ve lost your secure base, you know, it can be it can be a surgery, the body remembers anytime, you know, you’ve you’ve had anything kind of major and medical in the flesh has been cut into. So, you know, I would just say, think broader about what trauma may be. But it takes a while for kids to process that and, and they often need to come back to it again and again and again. And that’s part of their processing it. 

So when they ask repeatedly, are you coming home? Are you coming home? Are you coming home, or they want to tell the story of it again, and again. And again, that is actually how kids process things. And they also reenact it and play or they reenact it in drawing. So I would encourage that if they can’t put it in the language to let them be expressive in other ways. And when I say like, you know, we’ve already talked about this, talk about it as many times as they need to talk about it. And they may ask different questions each time, or they may be incredibly repetitive. But that repetition makes them feel safe and secure, too. 

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And any way that they can have predictability in their lives controlling their lives, that’s going to help them as well. And that predictability and control can just be small things like every morning when we get up, we chant these same things or we always start our morning with you know, a cup of tea and sitting together or before we go to bed we always say three stories and kiss each other goodnight. And control often feels like having choices in things, you know, do you want to wear these shorts or those shorts today? 

Anything that gives them a sense of agency and control feels really good after you feel like you felt sort of powerless. In an unpredictable world small things make a difference. 

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Wendy: Making the world a better place is so foundational for our family, that I try to get everything to come back to that little pivotal thing that the world spins on. 

Erin: That’s Wendy Russ, our Impact and Research Officer at Preemptive Love—both a colleague and a friend. 

Wendy: I’m from a little town in Arkansas, kind of at the foothills of the Ozarks. Little tiny town, 2600 people. 

Erin: Wendy, you have two sons? Yes? 

Wendy: I do. I have one teenage boy and one almost teenage boy. A 16-year-old and a 12-year-old. 

Erin: Can you tell me a little bit about them? 

Wendy: Yeah, my oldest one is, he’s big tall basketball guy. He’s got shocking pink hair. And he’s just so… he’s just so full of life. 

And then my younger one is 12. And he’s a lot more of an introvert, kind of a stay at home guy. Loves video games. And both of them are just so… my favorite thing about them is they’re so themselves. They’re just like, you know, they think what they want, they do what they want. And they just don’t care what people think. 

Erin: Amongst my coworkers, Wendy is known for being the kind of person and parent who doesn’t shy away from anything hard. Hard events. Hard questions. Hard conversations. Teenager-level hard. That’s a special skill in my books. I asked Wendy how she came to develop this approach to life. 

Wendy: I was raised by a very, very strong mother figure. And my dad was a marine. And she was a Marine’s wife. So that probably tells half the story right there. Because if there’s a beach, and it needed to be stormed, you just stormed the beach. And that was kind of attitude growing up. Was just if there’s a thing to do, you just go do it. And so right from the start, not working through hard things, not facing your fears, really, it wasn’t an option to not do that. 

But my mom went through a lot of very difficult things as a young person. And I think because of that she always wanted to prepare me for anything that might be coming up in life. It’s hard to hear when you’re a kid, because when you’re a kid, everything’s fun, and everything’s magical and the world glitters. 

When you start having conversations about death, or violence or things like that, it does change your worldview. For sure, and that does have side effects. 

Erin: Wendy is grateful for the way her mother raised her. She says she wouldn’t change a thing about her own upbringing. But she has modified her approach for her own boys. 

Wendy: We do talk about difficult things, and sometimes scary things. But I always do it with an approach of- let’s have this conversation in our head, between us, not from our chest, where fear originates. 

Erin: One of the things that many adults avoid talking directly to kids about, is politics. But I think we probably all realize that the kids around us are absorbing information about politics and politicians all the time. We get accustomed to talking in a particular way about politicians, because we never fear about those conversations happening with the person we’re talking about. Can you talk to me a little bit about what it was like to run for office in a small town and have kids at the same time? 

Wendy: Small towns are just weird. It’s such a closed-in environment. And everybody knows everybody, and everybody knows everybody’s business. And then to have what is normally a combative situation where you’ve got people going up against each other for the, you know, the grand prize, being able to lead your town. It’s especially strange, because that’s your neighbor, that’s the guy you’re talking to in the produce section. 

But we’d be sitting at the fish fry together, and just, you know, talking about, well, I think we should do this to fix the water problem, well I think we should do this. 

I had a lot of people call and say “you’re a woman you can’t run. H e’s one of the people who’s gonna take all the votes, because he’s the good old boy”. But, we just love the town so much, all of us, that we wanted to do good things. You know, when you love your community like that, you do what’s best for the community. But, aside from that, it’s still politics, and everybody still wants to win. 

Erin: Wendy’s boys 7 and 11 at the time, understandably in their mom’s corner, offered advice for how she should handle her opponents. “Come out swinging” they suggested. “Take your opponent down.” But Wendy coached her boys through a different kind of posture each time she ran for office—three times as city counselor and once as mayor. 

Wendy: I tried to stress throughout this, that people are still people, even though they have their ideologies. The underlying thing with people is, they’re human beings. They might be a conservative human being or a liberal human being, they might believe in the death penalty, or they might be pro-gun, or they might be for abortion or against abortion. But still beneath that, they wake up every day, go to work, have families, they get sad, they’re happy. They’re still us. And we are them. 

That’s what I really try to stress to my boys. They have parents telling them what to eat, when to go to bed, and how to study for their exams. They want to assert their power. So they assert their power by being loud and opinionated, and criticizing other people, and because that somehow, you know, makes them feel powerful. And when I see these things happening, I always try to remind them of that idea, that they’re still talking to people. And they have feelings, just like we do. 

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If somebody says something mean to them and hurts your feelings, we address it. Not only their feelings, but we address it like what- why do you think they said that? Or, how do you think they were feeling at the time they said that? Because I think understanding those things make you less reactionary. My youngest son is very sensitive. If we’re having conversations about people that maybe we don’t share their ideologies, he’ll start to take like a devil’s advocate role, even sometimes. And it’s really gratifying to see that. When you’re a parent, you don’t necessarily think I’m going to teach my child empathy. Right? You’re not really thinking that far ahead. But you start to see now, when 16 years later, 12 years later, you get to see the fruit of what you’ve been doing this whole time. 

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Erin: War, violence, politics…these aren’t easy topics to talk about among grown-ups. But all of us, kids included, benefit when we make space for each other to process, learn, and grow together. Visit this episode’s show notes at preemptivelove.org/podcast for more detailed information about how children consume news, and Alyson’s tips for talking to kids about the topics discussed today. 

In our next episode, we talk about what it looks like to talk to kids about race with Preemptive Love’s artist-in-residence, Propaganda, and his wife Dr. Alma Zaragoza-Petty. 

Connect with us and learn more about what we do via preemptivelove on Instagram and Twitter. Use the hashtag #loveanyway to give feedback or start a conversation. 

I’m Erin Wilson, and this is Love Anyway. Thanks for listening. 

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End credits: The Love Anyway podcast is written and produced by Kayla Craig, Ben Irwin, and Erin Wilson. Skip Matheny is our digital production director. Jonny Craig is our audio editor. Our audio is mixed and mastered by Dylan Seals. Jeremy Courtney, Jessica Courtney, and JR Pershall are executive producers. Special thanks to Wendy Russ and Alyson Schafer. Our theme music is by Roman Candle.