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Dear Miriam
My young child just learned about the Holocaust from someone outside our family and with no advanced warning for me or for her. Should I talk to the person responsible? What do I do now to take care of my child and put this in an age-appropriate context?
Signed,
Not on today’s agenda
Dear Agenda,
The moment that children are able to function independently of you is the moment they are going to find things out about the world that you’re not ready to share. Whether it happens when they go to school for the first time or learn to read or spend the night with grandparents or even just have any conversation with any person who’s not you, they’re going to encounter unfiltered information that neither of you is prepared for.
People whose grandparents left Europe to escape Nazis or other similarly-timed antisemitism seem to be of two minds regarding our own children and the Holocaust. One is, “I learned about this from a young age, so my children must also,” and the other is, “I learned about this at a young age and it was traumatizing, so I will protect my children from this information as long as possible.”
These two positions are incompatible with each other. If someone assumed you were in the first category and so they casually mentioned the Holocaust around your child, they might then be surprised to find out you’re in the second category, just like you’re surprised by their behavior. See, incompatible. But neither is right or wrong. You can ask the person responsible for more details about the conversation so you know what your child heard. You can ask for more context so you better understand this person’s judgment and rationale. But if by, “should I talk to the person” you mean, “should I tell them I’m angry,” first it really depends on the person and the context, and second, it depends what you want to accomplish with the conversation and whether that is actually achievable.
Most important is your last question regarding taking care of your child and responding appropriately in this moment. As with so many difficult topics, the best rule of thumb with young children is to answer their questions honestly and directly without providing additional information they’re not asking for. Make sure your child knows you’re a safe person to talk to no matter what. Look for age appropriate picture books about the Holocaust (or about Jewish immigrants from Europe in that time period) to read together. Making a topic less taboo is probably on the whole a net good, even if you’re unhappy with how you got there.
Finally, make sure you are taking care of yourself so that you’re equipped to have these discussions calmly and without bringing your own (totally understandable!) baggage into the conversation. Find resources on talking to children about difficult topics to help prepare yourself for next time. It’s probably very sad for you that your child knows something horrible about the world now, but by modeling being able to have difficult conversations and also modeling taking care of the people around you, you are making the world a little better in general and a lot better for your child.
Be well,
Miriam
