I grew up the oldest of seven kids. By 8th grade, we had left city life and moved to twenty acres in East Texas. At the ripe age of 13, I felt I could handle most of life’s curve balls. But country life brought on a whole new set of lessons, of which these are just a few of my favorites:
- Don’t leave your cat out at night, a mountain lion will eat it.
- Don’t leave your crutches leaning against the front porch, the miniature horse will grab them.
- Don’t fish in the river down the way, there’s a crocodile problem.
- Snakes can climb trees.
The biggest lesson I learned came at the dinner table. My mom had spent all afternoon making my grandmothers homemade noodles and we were enjoying a fantastic meal of chicken noodle soup. We were all sitting around the table discussing our days, pestering our siblings and reviewing homework that still needed to be done. As we were headed to the kitchen with our dishes, my mom nonchalantly mentioned that Big Dog (yes, I’m serious) had gotten into the chicken coop again and had done some permanent damage.
The room went silent.
We all stared at her.
Then we stared at each other.
Then it all began to click one by one.
Dry heaving was soon followed by screams and tears which was soon followed by anger.
What followed was a great, albeit unwanted, lesson in the circle of life. My mom calmly explained to us where food came from (I had siblings as young as 6, 5 and 2 at the time) and how people lived hundreds of years ago.
She also talked to us about how all our pets lives would end at some point (56 of them, to be exact. But that’s another post for another day).
That lesson has stuck in my mind for the last 15 years. At just the mention of my grandmothers soup, I am transported back to the moment of horror when I realized that life could, and would end.
My son is only 11 months old right now, but I want to be able to teach him to understand and process life in a healthy way. I don’t ever want to lie to him about a pet that has died, a friend with a less than desirable living situation, or the death of a loved one. I want to do this in a way that allows him to keep his childhood innocence while at the same time not building a bubble of safety around him.
So what do you think?
How do we talk to our kids about the tough stuff in life?
Have you had to talk to your kids about the tough stuff? What would you have done differently?
My little guy is only 20 months old, so we haven’t had to tackle these kinds of life lessons just yet. I’m eager to read replies from moms who have because that is definitely a burning question in my mind as well. I’m all about honesty at all costs when it comes to things like this, but I do know there are good, better & even best ways of handling these things with kiddos. Enlighten me, please! 🙂
Okay that first part had me cracking up. I’m a littler nervous to hear how you had to learn those lessons!
I also have not had to talk to my little ones about death much. But if a situation came up any time soon, I would definitely be honest with them, but leaving out details that might frighten them or give them anxiety. I think even with pets, it’s best to start teaching them young as opposed to sugar coating it. I’ll just try to avoid serving my kids Duma (our dog) for dinner any time soon 😉