Obviously on all of our minds first is our family. We provide a roof over their shelter, meals, and any and everything else that comes to mind. However, the one thing we sometimes forget is that one conversation.

Discussing the concepts of pandemic & protests is difficult, at best. What words are correct, and which should be avoided. Here’s a few rules:

1) Don’t speak ‘above’ their age of development. Talk in terms they understand without inferring things they can’t control. Think the story of Little Red Riding Hood (aka “Red”). Obviously, what needed to be avoided there was the wolf. Suitable for children, the representation of the wolf as a ‘bad’ character is easy enough, and if we put our words in more of a ‘story line’ it helps younger children to get it. Actually it helps adults too. We like stories, don’t we?

2) Keep the conversation fun, yet instructional in content — not detrimental. Talk about what Red could do to avoid the wolf — make it a game. That’s what we do as adults in doing our taxes via TurboTax — we make it a game (ala, Star Wars!) we play on the computer and pray at the end, the computer and our psychic don’t simultaneously ‘crash’.

3) Check in with your kids to hear what their thinking, and hearing from friends and media. Don’t criticize– you’ve asking them, their not asking you what YOU think. Or if they are, then they are asking for reassurance, and that’s a GOOD thing.

At the end of the day, these are life lessons we’re having to all learn and then teach to each other. It’s not easy ‘being the adult’ and it’s not easy ‘being a kid’ during these times. But we know, life’s circumstances change. Stay open to it.