A piece of innocence lost

[kberyldial]

My youngest daughter is 9 years old and has a running club at her grade school. Essentially parents volunteer to log laps. Each kid has a number and they yell it out after each lap to the parents keeping track. Six laps on the asphalt oval around the playground is a mile. They only log laps at the 15 minute lunch recess, starting in the fall. As defined at the beginning of the year, anyone logging more than 26.2 miles would be recognized at the Grand Blue Mile (tomorrow) and get to run with others that accomplished the goal. My daughter was one of 2 kids in the 3rd grade to do it. She has been extremely proud and excited for weeks. So she goes to bed tonight and yells down - stomach ache. My wife gets her calm. She arrived in the living room 15 minutes ago weeping. She admits that she's actually scared someone will bomb the race tomorrow.

I didn't expose my kids to the media blitz, but I talked to my them after last Monday about what happened. Where I failed my daughter was in my own response to the bombings - tragic, wrong, but the world we live in. I didn't so much say the last phrase but I'm sure that's how a 9 year old perceived it. There are far too many children in the world whose innocence is lost, our country pales by comparison. But I had a rude awakening tonight.

 

[HOTDON]

Pretty awful. My 10 year old son has some irrational concerns along the same lines from time to time. We have a nitrogen plant nearby, a fact he overheard me telling my wife. Now he's worried we might blow up.

 

[cowgirl836]

awwwwww that is so sad

 

[CycloneRulzzz]

that's a bummer to hear.

 

[Mesaclone1]

My youngest daughter is 9 years old and has a running club at her grade school. Essentially parents volunteer to log laps. Each kid has a number and they yell it out after each lap to the parents keeping track. Six laps on the asphalt oval around the playground is a mile. They only log laps at the 15 minute lunch recess, starting in the fall. As defined at the beginning of the year, anyone logging more than 26.2 miles would be recognized at the Grand Blue Mile (tomorrow) and get to run with others that accomplished the goal. My daughter was one of 2 kids in the 3rd grade to do it. She has been extremely proud and excited for weeks. So she goes to bed tonight and yells down - stomach ache. My wife gets her calm. She arrived in the living room 15 minutes ago weeping. She admits that she's actually scared someone will bomb the race tomorrow.

I didn't expose my kids to the media blitz, but I talked to my them after last Monday about what happened. Where I failed my daughter was in my own response to the bombings - tragic, wrong, but the world we live in. I didn't so much say the last phrase but I'm sure that's how a 9 year old perceived it. There are far too many children in the world whose innocence is lost, our country pales by comparison. But I had a rude awakening tonight.

You didn't fail your daughter, the world failed her. She has to live in this place and as dads we have little choice but to prepare our girls (and boys) for what they face out there. Even when we just give them the basics, it can be scary but in the interests of their own safety we pretty much can't keep them entirely in the dark...even at 9 years old. So you certainly did the right thing, but its just tragic that we can no longer shelter our kids from this stuff. I feel the same way when I have the "stranger-danger" talk or discuss what to do if someone were to try and abduct my daughter (fight like hell/scream/run). It scares them a little and some of their innocence is lost forever, and it stinks.

 

[cy4prez7]

I was in 4th grade during 9/11 and I remember having fears that little old Emmetsburg was going to be attacked for a while after it. It will subside eventually but that is sad to hear. Is she still planning on doing the run?

 

[timappelgate]

The media is at fault here.

 

[bosco]

It's tough to realize that she doesn't get to enjoy what she earned as fully and carefree as she should but maybe in exchange of some innocence lost she gains a little awareness and is better prepared for the world out there. Not much consolation but gets me to sleep at night...sometimes.

 

[Angie]

I'm so sorry.

 

[kberyldial]

I was in 4th grade during 9/11 and I remember having fears that little old Emmetsburg was going to be attacked for a while after it. It will subside eventually but that is sad to hear. Is she still planning on doing the run?

I'm going to run it with her now.

 

[jbhtexas]

Back in '50s and '60s, kids practiced nuclear attack drills in school. It would be interesting to know how their psyche was affected. Those drills had stopped by the time I started grade school in 1970 (at least I don't remember doing them).

Last Christmas, my wife and sister went antique shopping in Bakersfield, CA; I tagged along. There is an old Woolworths that is now an antique shop (they still operate the diner). One of the clerks told us there was an upstairs showroom with a few more antiques, so in our quest to see every antique for sale in Bakersfield, we trudged up several flights of stairs to this room. There were a few antiques up there, but the room was fascinating to me for another reason. It was stacked with a bunch of 50's/60's vintage (date was stamped on the items) Civil Defense rations...flour, lard, canned meats, bread, portable ovens, Geiger counters, shovels, portable latrines, water purification tablets, etc. Food by the barrel, all marked with the classic triangle CD logo. None of it was for sale, or I might have purchased a few small things just for show.

They practiced and prepared for attacks that never came. Unfortunately, they may have just been a few decades too early.

 

[kberyldial]

Life hardens all of us at some point for different reasons. Whether it be a death of a parent, a tragedy of some sort, etc. I suppose that all generations are hardened for various reasons as well, what JBH speaks of. For me I guess it was the threat of nuclear war with Russia. For my kids, I guess it's school shootings. Bombings at events like a marathon. The generation before my kids it was the threat of planes flying into buildings. Perhaps the effect on the psyche is the same, just translated and dealt with by our individual personality. Obviously my daughter took a very matter-of-fact way of correlating what happened in Boston to her own run in Des Moines. But really, it's alot closer than Moscow was for me.

 

[Cyclonin]

I was in 4th grade during 9/11 and I remember having fears that little old Emmetsburg was going to be attacked for a while after it. It will subside eventually but that is sad to hear. Is she still planning on doing the run?

My wife and I were chatting about this the other day. We were both in 8th grade and didnt quite grasp everything, but she had said that her teacher (Linn-Mar) had scared the **** out of all the kids by telling them that Cedar Rapids would probably be hit. She said the teacher had some reasoning, but I forgot what she had said.

Don't mean to de-rail, but I was stunned that this teacher was making a bad situation even worse.

To the OP, that is a bummer. It is truly unfortunate, and you are a great Dad for going with her.

 

[Cyclonin]

Life hardens all of us at some point for different reasons. Whether it be a death of a parent, a tragedy of some sort, etc. I suppose that all generations are hardened for various reasons as well, what JBH speaks of. For me I guess it was the threat of nuclear war with Russia. For my kids, I guess it's school shootings. Bombings at events like a marathon. The generation before my kids it was the threat of planes flying into buildings. Perhaps the effect on the psyche is the same, just translated and dealt with by our individual personality. Obviously my daughter took a very matter-of-fact way of correlating what happened in Boston to her own run in Des Moines. But really, it's alot closer than Moscow was for me.

This is my thought, all the school shootings scared the crap out of me in HS. I am not taking anything away from the nuclear warfare scare, but with nowadays being a lot more stuff on US soil, right around the corner, things could get scary for a child.

I grew up in Urbandale, we had a gun threat in middle school (I think there was an actual gun, can't remember) and 2 bomb threats in HS (both times we evacuated the school, kind of scary).

 

[azepp]

Life hardens all of us at some point for different reasons. Whether it be a death of a parent, a tragedy of some sort, etc. I suppose that all generations are hardened for various reasons as well, what JBH speaks of. For me I guess it was the threat of nuclear war with Russia. For my kids, I guess it's school shootings. Bombings at events like a marathon. The generation before my kids it was the threat of planes flying into buildings. Perhaps the effect on the psyche is the same, just translated and dealt with by our individual personality. Obviously my daughter took a very matter-of-fact way of correlating what happened in Boston to her own run in Des Moines. But really, it's alot closer than Moscow was for me.

It's tough to deal with as a parent, but none of us would be successful adults if we didn't use our childhood to learn how to cope with the difficulties and fears that we face in life.

Your decision to run with her will be a valuable lesson to her that she can rely on her family to help confront those things which cause her emotional distress.

 

[cy4prez7]

This is my thought, all the school shootings scared the crap out of me in HS. I am not taking anything away from the nuclear warfare scare, but with nowadays being a lot more stuff on US soil, right around the corner, things could get scary for a child.

I grew up in Urbandale, we had a gun threat in middle school (I think there was an actual gun, can't remember) and 2 bomb threats in HS (both times we evacuated the school, kind of scary).

Yeah I'm going to be a teacher so I will always be worried about school shootings. Sandy Hook kind of rocked me because it was elementary.