What do we tell our children?

Lewis P. Lipsitt, professor emeritus of psychology, medical science, and human development, is the founding former editor of The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter. He offers the following advice to parents.

(Reader reaction follows)

The attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon push the envelope of credulity to a new limit. Until now, we have lived through two world wars without invasion of our mainland. On Sept. 11, 2001, we were attacked where most of us live.

That the soldiers of this army were suicidal, and thus are no longer available for counter-attack, does not gainsay that they declared war on the United States and could have, had they lived, engaged in armed shoulder-to-shoulder combat with our protective forces.

For the benefit of our children, we must confront the realities of the situation. If in the process we learn more about our own vulnerabilities, so much the better.

The magnitude of the tragedy notwithstanding, parents' advice to their children should, in my opinion, be essentially the same as for other circumstances that parents have to clarify for their children. Parents nowadays are rather well accustomed to explaining to their children, in age-appropriate ways, that sometimes terrible things happen in the community and in the world. The chances of one of these awful things, excluding a death in the family (or of a friend or pet) happening to "you" (the child) are very small.

Parents should convey that they can’t completely guarantee the safety of the child, but that they will do everything in their power to keep their children safe, secure, with a home to go to with parents who love them and who have great compassion for their anxiety and sadness. That in itself is an important lesson to the child; in this way, the children are being taught that they must learn ways to protect themselves.

This is what, in my opinion, should be conveyed to children. In circumstances like the present, parents themselves will be transparent. They will appear to be overwhelmed (as indeed I am) by the enormity of the destruction, the senseless behavior of the suicidal attackers, the fantastic loss of innocent life, the grave injuries to multitudes of people, and the psychological fallout, including traumatic effects on the survivors.

There is nothing wrong with parents evidencing such justifiable disturbance, for that is part of living in a dangerous world, and children must not become extra-scared of their own natural, emotional reactions. Observing "parental scare" provides a child an important opportunity to learn that, first, even parents are not immune to fear and, most importantly, that we survivors must and can cope with events that disturb us deeply.

Letter to the editor

Tell us if you can, Professor Lipsitt, what we should tell our children here in New York City. What should I have told my daughter, who was home sick from school on Tuesday, the 11th, watching with me as the 2nd plane crashed into the World Trade Center and it became clear that the first crash was not an accident? What should I have told her, 45 minutes later, when one tower crumbled to the ground and, for the first time in her life, she saw her father cry? What should we tell our children when they smell smoke in their bedrooms at night: not to worry because there is no fire in the apartment, but only the smoldering remains of the World Trade Center a few miles downtown? What should we say to our children as we walk down the street past posters of other children's missing mothers and fathers, of other people's missing children? What should we tell them every morning and afternoon when we pass the firehouses with memorial candles, flowers and shrines to the missing firemen, and groups of mourners gathered outside? What should we tell our children here in New York City who are old enough to understand that we cannot completely guarantee their safety: that we love them and will do everything we can to care for them but that when they're in school and we're a mile or two away at work in skyscrapers, a plane could hit their school or -- perhaps more fearful to them -- their parents' offices? Tell us if you can, Professor Lipsitt.