I don’t know about you, but I have already been a child and seem to still be one on occasion. I sometimes pretend to be an adult though not always effectively. In moments of pretending to be an adult, I have been involved in adult conversations about adult and sometimes scary subjects. When I would point out to the other adult that children were within earshot and that we should take it down a notch or change subjects, I have been told that it was all right since the kids did not hear what was being said in front of them nor did they understand.
It brings up two questions:
- First: When did children’s hearing get so bad? It’s not like you are asking the kids to do their chores; then their hearing is so bad you might want to try sign language to get your message across. At the very least, you consider making an appointment with the doctor to get them checked. Then you remember the last time you whispered to your better half about a surprise you wanted to do for them. Suddenly, they have bionic hearing.
- Second: Since when did kids become dumb?
I believe people are fundamentally intelligent; and I believe children are people, therefore children are probably fundamentally intelligent.
Please don’t mix « intelligence » with « knowledge ».
Intelligence is a capacity to take in information, to reorganise it to something useable, to possibly create a new understanding by connecting it to prior knowledge, and then to use it. Knowledge is to know facts.
As people get older we assume they are exposed to information and their knowledge grows; at least we hope it does. Their intelligence does not grow all that much, if at all.
Let’s get back to the children. Intelligent children take in the verbal cues, facial expressions, tone of voice and organise that information to know something is wong. They then use the knowledge they have about what could go wrong and use that information to fill in the blanks the adults don’t want to share. In other words they invent the worse scenario to correspond to hushed whispers and to what they see. They can invent worse than the news you are trying to hide.
Let’s assume we all have brilliant children with excellent hearing. Let’s also consider their feelings of helplessness when they see the reactions of the adults around them who may be feeling just as helpless. We can help them by supporting them with the information of what is going on.
That is easier said than done for worried parents. The difficult thing is to find a delicate balance in what is said and how to say it when our own world is pretty much out of control.
My husband and I ended up having a fair bit of practice in this kind of situation throughout the kids’ childhood. The structure we came up with in those moments worked well for us.
We would:
- turn off our cellphones,
- go to the doctor’s office together,
- as we leave the doctor’s office, we go out for coffee right away,
- talk:
- share what we understood,
- make decisions,
- decide what to tell the kids and how,
- go home,
- tell the kids first,
- explain that none of this was their responsibility and we would keep them in the loop,
- see if they had questions,
- tell them that we would help them find answers to their questions if they popped up later,
- and ask them what they wanted for supper or something as equally normal.
In sharing with them in such a way we hoped they would feel confident that we would include them when we would have news that might affect them. We did not want them to wonder what was going on. They would have enough with worrying for real reasons.
We also told them first because they were the most likely people to overhear us or our conversations on the phone.
They deserved to be on our radar.
Please join us next time with “UGGHHH Paperwork” just around the corner.
I would love to hear from you if you wish to leave a comment or start a conversation.
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