Innocence lost

How honest should you be with a four-year-old?

Welcome to Mother’s Gonna Work it Out – a newsletter not just for mothers with children, but for everyone who cares for anyone. All previous posts are here.

‘Mummy, what happens if you’re on a boat and it sinks, and then the lifeboat sinks?’

Dexter is in the bath when he asks this question, and submerges his yellow submarine to emphasise the point.

‘And then what if the lifeboat that comes to save the lifeboat sinks too?’

This is just one of the catastrophic scenarios I’ve been presented with of late. And they just keep coming.

Alongside peril, Dexter has also been toying with justice and retribution. One evening before bed came the story of an imaginary burglar who broke into our flat while we slept and stole Dexter’s prized Halloween cat ears – but then the police caught him (it’s always a he), and he went to jail for a very long time. ‘He’s a jailmans,’ I was told.

I’ve since discovered that they play ‘jailmans’ at nursery, the jail being the bit where the bikes are parked, and where one of his cohort was banished after he threw someone’s hat in the dirt.

‘Mummy, if someone’s a baddie they go to jail and stay there for a long time.’

Something’s shifted in the past few weeks, like his eyes are pulling the world into a clearer focus, initiating the steady, slow and, for me, painful dissolution of a world where there was no good or bad.

How honest should I be as I steward him through this awakening? Do I tell the child who’s seldom satisfied with a half-truth that the prison system is broken? Do we discuss restorative justice? How could I ever tell him that the current president of the United States is running the world’s most powerful country like Tony Soprano? Or do I just agree with this four-year-old looking up at me with those beautiful big brown eyes bright with inquisitiveness and as yet undimmed by cynicism.

I take to the internet and sift through the platitudes to find Cypriot psychologist Theodora Constantinou, who suggests: ‘Children’s thinking becomes more advanced as they develop. They begin to understand hypothetical scenarios and imagine risks, even if they’re unlikely; they might worry about thieves breaking into their house, even if this has never happened before.’

So that would explain the stolen cat ears. Theodora suggests validating feelings, reassuring children of their safety, and teaching coping strategies like deep breathing or imagining a happy, safe place. I haven’t tried the latter. I will.

But what do we do about Donald Trump?

I have a cup of tea with my neighbour who has two slightly older children. I start talking about how confronting it is to see Dexter’s innocence begin to slip away, and she’s nodding even before I’ve finished my sentence.

‘And it’s only just beginning,’ she says.

Her son, who is eight, has been asking questions about the man he calls ‘Donald Fart’ – how he seems like he’s a baddie, and how could a baddie be in charge when he’s a baddie?

My neighbour is using the conceit of a badly written Marvel film to tackle this one. ‘Lex Luthor shouldn’t have all the power,’ she told her son, ‘but the film is being written badly, and soon enough the film will be written by proper writers again and it’ll make more sense.’

And he bought it? Apparently so.

‘So,’ she told her son, ‘you trust your feelings about what’s right and what’s wrong and if you need any help figuring that out, then we’re here to help.’

As the world burns, I feel reassured by the creativity of this approach. It’s truthful enough not to be disingenuous, and also speaks her son’s language. And for someone who’s often too honest for her own good, it gives me an offramp to a fantasy world where we can consider the shapes of these feelings and start to explore language with which to parse the iniquities of the world.

I say this, but when I’m next presented with the prospect of a mass drowning, I involuntarily blaspheme – words that are repeated back to me until I decide to go full honest and admit that I’ve done a bad thing and been disrespectful to use this man’s name in vain. We start on religion, but Dexter’s attention wanes.

Instead, he attacks his Spider-Man rubber duck with his submarine, until both are submerged and there’s water all over the floor.

‘Spideyduck is deaded, just like Hans deads Elsa.’

I clean the bubbles off Spideyduck in silence.

I think we’ll leave the death chat for another day.