Archives for January 2011

When Children Are Murdered- Innocence Lost

Last Friday night the dark haired beauty made an announcement at the dinner table. “A man in Arizona tried to kill lots of ladies. He shot 10 and killed six of them.” I furrowed my brow and asked her to tell me what she was talking about. It wasn’t because I didn’t know that she was referring to Jared Loughner and his actions in Tucson. I knew precisely, but I wanted to try and figure out what she knew and how she had heard.

You see the dark haired beauty is 6.5 going on 30. She is a first grader who is a on a mission to magically transform herself into a girl who is old enough to do whatever her big brother does. And while I appreciate that I am not interested in having her innocence destroyed overnight.  She knows that the world can sometimes be a dark and dangerous place but I prefer for some of those details to be withheld.

“Dad, you read the news all the time. How can you not know about the bad man.” I shook my head and silently wondered why she has to be so much like me. Must she answer a question with a question. For a moment I ignored her question and asked her to tell us what she knew. We learned that the music teacher at school had talked about it but it wasn’t clear to me how it came up or frankly why it did. It also wasn’t clear to me whether she knew about the little girl who was murdered and though I wasn’t going to volunteer it I needed to know.

This is the kind of conversation that I want to be careful with. I can’t gloss over it but I don’t want my children to walk away being scared of the world either. Since it was during dinner her brother was a part of the discussion too. The difference is that he and I have already had some of these conversations, Several years ago we talked about why Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. A few years after that we talked about what a gas chamber is and why people would use them.

These were painful discussions for a whole variety of reasons. But part of what hurt was knowing that a piece of innocence was being taken away. Part of the trick to these fireside talks with the kids is to provide them with a small amount of information. They don’t need a ton of details. Just a few highlights and reassurance that the sun is still going to rise and set in the same places.

It is a formula that has worked very well and it was fine for my daughter. However her older brother is growing more sophisticated and later on I found us engaged in a longer talk about good and evil. But I’ll save that conversation for a different post.

A few hours after dinner had ended the dark haired beauty lay in bed talking to me. I sat on the floor next to her bed and smiled as she read a story to me. Her hair was still slightly damp from the shower and her breath was minty fresh from the toothpaste. It was sort of surreal, this child of mine felt both big and little to me. After she finished reading I told her it was time to turn out the lights. She said that she loved me and gave me a huge hug.

In a soft voice she asked, “Daddy, do bad people kill children too?” I smiled at her and told her not to worry because my job is to take care of protecting her. She asked me what would happen if the bad people came to school and I wasn’t there. So I lied and said that if they came to school I would too. And then she grabbed my cheeks, looked me in the eye and told me not to kid around. I stared right back at her and said again that I would get them first.

She nodded her head and then told me that if bad people ever to try to hurt her family I must kill them. I am not really sure if she completely understood what she asked me to do, but I told her that I would. A few minutes later she was fast asleep and I walked into the living room and muttered a silent prayer that it never comes to that. Not because I am incapable or unwilling to protect my children because that is not even a question.

But because that is the kind of situation that I’d rather leave in the land of hypotheticals and nightmares. Sometimes this parenting thing is hard.

The Joy of Defeat isn’t something that you typically hear or read about. From a young age we are taught that losing isn’t something to be respected, admired or loved. Victory is what we seek and anything less is looked down upon. For some people that sounds ridiculous and any suggestion that it isn’t will probably be met with ridicule. If you are one of those people who believe that winning is everything prepare to roll your eyes because I don’t see life like that. And as a father I think that part of my job is to teach children how to lose gracefully.

Because the fact is that our children are not going to win every time. They will encounter many situations where they do not and I don’t want my kids to lose their minds because they don’t have coping skills. It is a topic that I have thought about often.  I work hard to teach them how to deal with what comes and not to quit. And I don’t mind doing it because the Resourceful Father is happy to pass along whatever wisdom he possesses.

But What About The Joy of Defeat?

I am glad that you asked because they say that confession is good for the soul and I must confess that this past weekend I experienced the Joy of Defeat. The boy we call “Little Jack” played in a regional soccer tournament. It was a privilege that was bestowed upon the top two teams in his division and we had high hopes to do well enough in the tournament to earn the right to advance again.

So here my friends is my confession….there was a part of  me that hoped that they didn’t win. There, I said it, I admitted out loud that part of me didn’t want them to enjoy success. Part of me wanted them to lose so that we would regain our ability to do other things on the weekend.

However my feelings suffered from a bad case of bifurcation because even though I sort of hoped that we would lose I also wanted to win. I wanted that big kid to feel the thrill of victory. I wanted him to continue to experience the  benefits that come from being part of a team.  The boys all like each other and it was a lot of fun to see them play, especially when they played well because they did so with such joy.

Ultimately our boys did not prevail in their quest for glory, at least not from the perspective of winning it all. In fact they lost every single game they played that day and I found myself gritting my teeth. It wasn’t because I was angry but because I was disappointed. I was disappointed because they could have won every game. I was disappointed because the reason that they lost was because they didn’t hustle or play with urgency.

I never told my son that I was disappointed or that I thought that the boys let themselves down because I didn’t see any upside to it. I want him to look back upon this time fondly and as I said in my earlier confession, it is kind of nice to regain some control over the weekend.