We've all had to answer that question this week, haven't we?
In our home, we are honest with our kids. Evil is horrible, and they have seen me cry over it. We have prayed together, and we have had many hard discussions.
That said, we also do not allow the news to color their minds with all kinds of scary images, and with the world's perspective. They do not know the shooter's name, but they do know about Victoria.
I'd rather them not know about any of this scary stuff, to be honest. But this life is full of it. We don't dare pretend that it isn't. We call evil evil, and then we point them to Him who has overcome.
Sometimes we point with tears, and hands that shake, but still, we point.
And He comforts and upholds us, as He has promised.
From Russel D. Moore...
Too many of our Bible study and discipleship materials (whether for Baptist Vacation Bible School or Roman Catholic confirmation preparation or what have you) de-claw the Bible. They excise all the snakes and dragons and wildness. In so doing, they reduce the Bible to a set of ethical guidelines and a text on how gentle and kind Jesus is.
The problem is, our kids know there are monsters out there. God put that awareness in them. They're looking for a sheep-herding dragon-slayer, for the One who can put all the wild things under his feet. Until we can address, with gospel honesty, what scares our children—and ourselves—we can never get to the joyous wild rumpus of gospel freedom.
Read the entire article here
You may also enjoy Not for Sissies: On teaching violent love to children
How do you handle the "scary stuff" in your home?
I'd love to hear how you handle these things with your children.
I like the quote. And the picture.
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ReplyDeleteI like the drawing and its nice and my elder son also use to draw dragons like this in different ways.
ReplyDeleteMy children are very small (5 and under), and we address death when it's relevant to their lives. Their great-grandfather died last year, so we talked a lot about that. We've had some pets owned by family members die. We ALWAYS talk about the Resurrection of the dead when we pass a cemetery. My folks live across from a cemetery, so that's fairly often. "When Jesus returns all the dead in that cemetery will rise, and some to eternal life." My husband's sister died before we were married, and we visit her grave around the time of her birthday (near Easter) and her birth into eternity (11 days before Christmas). I think it's good for children to visit cemeteries.
ReplyDeleteSince there are a ton of martyrs in the Church calendar, death kind of comes up a lot. I try not to dwell too much on how the saint died, but rather why. This week alone we have St. Stephen's Day and the Holy Innocents. That last one was hard. My kids do not know about abortion, yet, and I really dread explaining it. But I think it's good for a two year old to associate death with "Jesus-died-on-the-cross-to-cover-all-my-sins" or Christian martyrs before tackling death and violence in general.
We don't expose them to any news media, and we don't talk about sad stories like the CT murders (unless something awful, God forbid, were to happen in our church or town). There is enough sin and sorrow and death to go around without adding more from places and people we do not know.