As the election season heated up late summer this year, we noticed our nine and six-year-old children trying to edge their way into discussing the candidates with us. We shut it down multiple times. They wanted to watch the debates. They wanted me to ‘go back! go back!’ when they heard a snippet of news about the election on NPR as I switched stations in the car. They even brought home Scholastic lessons they had studied at school with trivia about Trump and Clinton to ‘educate’ us and perhaps start a discussion. We stood our ground. Come November 9th, we’ll tell you first thing in the morning who got elected and that will be the end of the story for you, we repeatedly told them. Eventually they got the message and stopped pestering us to let them watch the debates and telling us how much they hate Trump.
However, every family has a different point of view about this so we knew there were ‘issues’ being hashed out at the playground. He’s mean to women, he’s a bully, he’ll make us all wear uniforms to school, he keeps interrupting Hillary, my friend is concerned her family will move, Mexico is not voting for Trump because he’s making them pay for the wall, everyone in my class (First grade) is voting for Hillary because she’s a woman, everyone at our school is voting for her because she’s a woman.
Then came November 8th. Despite the fact that we had been a politics-free home, the excitement was palpable. But by evening at the soccer field during practice, children were bringing in numbers and it didn’t look good for Hillary. That night we let them watch the votes being tallied on the news for a little while, but it was dinner and bedtime as usual and they went to bed quite dejected.
This is what we had been hoping to avoid at least in our home. The ugliness of politics, the bleakness of the future, uncertainty in people’s lives- is not a burden our children should bear.
Wednesday morning, they were told Trump was to be the new president. Just like that. Matter-of- factly relayed to them. It was a regular school day and they had those math and spelling tests the next day to worry about. They seemed relieved to not have to debate the pros and cons of the decision anymore or what the result meant for the future because all that they had talked about at school has been so dark and scary. There were no tears and we did not have to talk them through any feelings because we had told them all along they were too little to worry about these things.
As adults we process these decisions, worry about what the future holds and more often than not life goes on and the world does not end. We understand nuances, the checks and balances and the absurdity of some of the hysteria. Yes, we are worried about the ugly tone this election has set but I am certainly not exposing my children to any of it. At this age, they don’t have the sensibility to move on from such a fearful outcome. We want them to feel secure and be fearless no matter who leads the country. We do not want to entertain the thought that just because a woman did not get elected our daughter should in any way feel different or dejected.
This brings me to the issue of a woman running for president. Why does my daughter need to think that is a big deal? In her mind at nine, she has never seen a difference. She’s always been told she can do whatever a boy can do and I intend to keep it at that. I grew up in India where a woman was prime minister and quite honestly, it never occurred to us girls that we had any more or less chances of achieving whatever dreams we were pursuing just because she was leading the country. What my father told us sisters about being independent and strong is what framed our ideas about how we wanted to lead our lives.
It is important for children to have role models who have achieved great heights but I’m certainly not letting them get so embroiled in the politics of things that they feel limited by decisions that are beyond even our understanding.
