DD's emotional regulation and social precosity has meant that we've never really shielded her in any way-- which was fine
for her.She saw news footage of 9/11 as a toddler. She knew what she was watching, much to my horror (in retrospect-- and she didn't see much of it, because THAT, we felt, was something that definitely called for censoring for our 2yo). But she processed that just fine-- she didn't bottle it up, (well, once she knew that WE knew that she knew) and she asked questions, etc.
For her, I dunno, but this is going to sound super-weird, and I think that it deserves explaining specifically, because NOT censoring things has been a very deliberate choice on our part. Okay-- my DD nearly died at 11mo old, and somewhere, there is a visceral memory of that. Okay, so it could happen again without warning (and has, on a few occasions); that sense of powerlessness is a very hard thing to live with. It takes a lot of courage and-- well,
nerve, I guess-- to live knowing that all the time. Because she has pretty much always known that, it made so very little sense to us to shield her from all of this stuff that she observed and asked endless questions about ANYWAY. In some respects, this is a self-serving decision on our part, because we WANT her to be tough this way-- people
are sometimes incredibly mean to her for reasons that have nothing to do with WHO she is, and everything to do with WHAT she is. That just plain sucks. But it doesn't suck so much that she ought to waste her time dwelling in self-pity. I've seen kids raised with chronic medical conditions paralyzed by it, and so I knew from the minute of her diagnosis that this was something to avoid. She needs to be STRONG-- and she also needs to know that others have it
way, WAY worse than she does.
KWIM?
But she isn't even most gifties in this respect. She is tough as shoe leather in some respects, and this is one of them. Her response
is to DO SOMETHING about stuff that bothers her-- or to live in such a way that the world is a better place for her having been in it today.
One other thing that I've learned over the years, too? Because I have a child that
talks and interacts with others as though she is many years older than her age,
adults sometimes tell her things that they'd never DREAM of saying to a child of her chronological age. If she hadn't already known that her diagnosis was potentially fatal, the children's librarian let that one out of the bag right in front of my wide-eyed 5yo after prominent media coverage of a similar fatality. Another adult, remarking obliquely on the disappearance of a local young woman, referred to some things being "worse than dead." (Meaning, if she was being held and tortured). DD, then 6 or 7, insisted on knowing what on earth that person had meant by that statement, since she'd been exposed to the virtually wall-to-wall coverage (some of it national). So yeah, we discussed rape and torture with her-- because SHE WANTED TO KNOW. Really.
She seems to have an internal center of calm that is undisturbed by this stuff, however. It's not that she is detached, or doesn't understand. She does. But she processes it, and places it in its proper place in her understanding of the universe and the people in it. She sees the good in the everyday, as well. So it seems that we've done okay in this regard-- but honestly, it
did make me wince when my 3yo confessed that her favorite show on TV was CSI.
