No Stupid Questions

Depending on age, but generally, go from small to big.

Something like: "You know that sometimes people disagree and become angry at each other? A good way to solve it is to speak it through and find a common ground. But that doesn't always happen, and some people start a fight - I know you've seen that happening in your life.

But sometimes it's not just John and Jane - those can be the leaders of countries and groups, too. When people commanding others cannot find a common ground, a fight can be very brutal, and many innocent people may get hurt. Sometimes it leads to a war, but sometimes it gets more sneaky.

Sometimes, armies are not sent on a battlefield. People are sent as civilians, but they are actually armed, and can kill many innocent people around them. This is terrorism.

The goal of terrorism, however, is not necessarily to kill as many people as possible, but to make everyone scared. When you don't know whether the person next to you carries a bomb, it is scary indeed. Because of that, our country has special forces that find and arrest terrorists before they do any harm, so nowadays terrorist attacks are very rare, and really, you don't have to worry much about it. Stick it to them!"

I have 18 month old twins. They're not old enough to explain things too, but I ponder this type of thing a lot.

Basically my plan is multi-faceted, but I'll acknowledge up front that it's untested and likely contain grave errors, but like any parent since the dawn of time I'll try to learn from my errors and adjust my strategy.

I'm not going to dumb anything down. If you're old enough to wonder where babies come from then you're old enough to understand that males produce sperm and women produce an egg and the two combine to produce a baby. That doesn't mean a 4 year old needs to learn about STDs or abortion or rape, just that there's no harm nor shame in learning.

It's going to take a lot of time. Not to explain things, but to maintain a relationship where my kids feel comfortable asking me about awkward things. Not "why is the sky blue" but "why do I feel this way" or what ever.

Also, I plan to be honest and frank about the limitations of my knowledge. This is something that as an adult I find frustrating about my own childhood. My parents did their best within their means and societal norms, but whenever they didn't know something they just made it up usually within some kind of religious framework. If I know part of the answer then I'll acknowledge that I don't have the whole answer and suggest how we might learn more.

To answer your actual question though, I don't think one really explains terrorism on any given day. Like you could explain that terrorism is the use of fear for a political or ideological objective, but that's not really an understanding is it. I've spent a lifetime trying to understand people's motivation for this type of hatred and I hope my children do too.

That.. really depends on your politics. It could range from 'There are bad people who want to hurt us' to 'we are bad people who hurt people and sometimes they decide to try to hurt us back.'

They start active shooter drills in Pre-K. That's 3-4 years old. You're kids are going to be more likely to be shot at school than a police officer after 20 years of service. Homie, they get told.

Bro kids today are fully aware about terrorism

School shooters are mainly right wing terrorists

Long before they'll ask on their own, they'll learn about it in school every and ask you questions prepared by their teacher about how it affected you.

With kids there is no one size fits all approach. And you won't do everything right as a parent either. Ever. You're on a tightrope walk of keeping the ills of the world away from them and them fantasizing about the ills of the world from the bits and pieces they pick up along the way.

They have to feel safe. With you/at home/etc. As long as you get that mostly right, the other pieces fall into place. One of those pieces will be the MO you're looking for here.

If you're overly worried about the idea of having kids: even the dumbest, most ignorant humans have brought up the overwhelming majority of their children successfully. It's not as hard as one thinks before. Because you worry about something like this way ahead of time, I am fairly sure you'll do better than them.

sit around the campfire, and tell them how bush destroyed a huge us building and killed us citizens in order to kill more people somewhere else.

Interesting question that idk. It’s a harsh truth that even I struggle with at the lowest level of some people are just mean. Sometimes there’s a comment here on lemmy that is so mean for no reason that it sticks with me. Idk how to explain that to a child

There’s no real art to it. It’s done the same way you grew up in a world where horrible shit had happened 20 years before you were born. You just sort of internalize it over time. Or not.

There are some people that don't like to be nice. Some people do things that are mean. Do you remember when we talked about why it's not good to do mean things? That's why we have lots of people who are good at helping to make sure people stay safe. That's why there are people that look at our bags when we go thru the airport, to make sure nobody brings anything dangerous on the airplane, so we all stay safe.

If you are religious, explaining things in a way that doesn't contradict theology is tricky. If not, just keep it real. Thing are past the point of sugarcoating them.