Days like this make you want to hug your children. But should you also tell them the truth?
I didn’t see my kids this morning.
A work commitment meant I had to leave the house before it was light.
My daughter had crept into our bed during the night and was quietly snoring beside my partner, all warm and musty and damp-haired as I slid out from under the covers and snuck out of the house.
I was in the car when I heard of the news about the plane crash, and at work as I watched it unfold, getting more serious and closer to home with every rolling update.
“Keep the telly on ABC4Kids,” I texted home. “This plane crash news is horrendous.”
I know you can’t keep real life out of your home, out of your kids’ heads. I know that at some point they need to know.
But my little daughter is four and a half.
She knows all about aeroplanes.
Like millions of other Australians, I was born somewhere else and my family and friends still live there. People we love are always criss-crossing the world, flying routes I would never have thought twice about.
So she loves planes.They take her somewhere fun, or deliver people who love her to our door.
My little daughter also knows about death. She’s really, really interested in it.
“What does it take to make you DIE, mummy?”
“What do you do when you DIE, mummy?”
“Am I going to DIE, mummy? Are you going to DIE? What about my brother Billy? Is he going to DIE? WHEN?”
