Introducing Our Children to Evil - My New Kentucky Home

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We hadn’t made it to the local library in quite some time, so on Monday I promised the kids if they would work hard and finish school early, we would make a trip. As always, it was quite a motivator!

Once there, each child was to find at least one nonfiction book on a topic they were interested in learning about. Little Man chose snakes and dinosaurs, Doodle wanted to learn about dogs and cats, and Peanut said he was into motorcycles.

But then Polly Wolly informed me she wanted a book about World War II. And I cringed.

Her interest springs primarily from her love of C. S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia books that, while containing only the briefest and minutest of references to the war, are nevertheless set during that era. I’m confident, too, she hasn’t missed my own hearty interest in World War II. It’s a time period that intrigues me greatly, both the war itself and the effects of it on the home front, and I read about it often.

But as much as I share in my daughter’s interest and as pleased as I am with her desire to learn and know, I’m also painfully aware that unbelievable horrors surround any serious study of World War II.

Hitler and the Holocaust. The Nanking Massacre. The Bataan Death March. The horrors of D-Day. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All dreadful, nightmarish aspects of a dreadful, nightmarish war.

Honestly, I wish my daughter never had to know about any of it. I wish I could somehow shield my children from every depravity and every incident, both past and present, of “man’s inhumanity to man.”

But I can’t. And even if I could, it wouldn’t erase those events from history and would serve only to keep my children from learning any lessons such awful incidents have to teach them. Shielding my kids completely, if even possible, would be negligent and irresponsible parenting.

Did I want to steer my daughter’s interest in another direction? Absolutely. But at some point she needs to be introduced to the evils of World War II. Not a full, adult-size dose of evil, mind you, but in small, controlled measure. And so together we set out in search of a book I felt would be acceptable.

How sad that less than an hour after reconciling myself to allowing my daughter to learn, at least a little, about the evils of World War II, two bomb explosions would rock Boston, killing 3 and wounding nearly 200 more.

There is evil in the world and making our children aware of it is a tricky, but necessary business. Whenever evil evidences itself in present-day circumstances, or it’s revived from the past, I think these are helpful things to keep in mind. Where we see evil…

We should seize the opportunity to discuss with our children issues of right and wrong.

Moral relativism rules our day. Society is uncomfortable with the concept of absolute truth, yet when atrocities are committed in war or innocents are murdered at a public venue, the general populace has little trouble defining it as an act of evil.

But even a godless, humanistic world seems to miss that defining any act as evil necessitates an established standard of good, and any standard of this sort points to the existence of a God and validates the truth of the Bible.

Point it out. Make it plain. There are things that are absolutely right and things that are absolutely wrong. The Word of God provides an excellent standard for determining both. And while the world pushes the idea that all men are inherently good, we can stress the truth that while, by God’s grace, there is the potential for good in every person, there is also the potential for incredible evil.

We should always be careful only to share what information is age-appropriate.

My 6-year old doesn’t need to know the awful details of the holocaust or the particular horrors of the Sandy Hook shooting. While I do want my children informed about history and current events, I do not want them tormented by fear!

Collectively I give my children the most basic of information, usually without showing them any images at all, which is something I’ll address in a moment. A little discussion is more than enough for my youngest. My older children will generally ask questions and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability, being careful not to overwhelm them with too many details. I’ll share more in-depth information with my oldest and even allow her to do some limited reading on their own if she’s interested, but never without careful supervision.I want to protect my children’s innocence as long as possible and I don’t think I can be too cautious when it comes to exposing them to the evils of our world. I want to do my job in educating them, but they will doubtless come face to face with it all soon enough.

We should tailor the delivery of information to fit our children’s sensitivity.

Not every child is alike, of course. Without question Doodle is the most sensitive of my children, so much so that the sight of an injured bird or a stray dog will keep her awake at night. I appreciate such tenderness, but I’m fully aware I have to be especially careful what information she is exposed to, knowing well it may negatively affect her in ways it may not affect the others. Some children may need greater protection and we should do our best to provide it.But children of a different personality may not be sensitive enough! In that case it may be necessary to take a different approach, perhaps to give them more information, to help them grasp the gravity of a situation they may take too lightly.

I once heard a mother tell the horror of discovering that her 12-year old son and his friends had begun using swastikas and anti-Jewish slurs in part of their play. Tearfully the mother explained she had decided to deal with it by exposing her son to some pretty in-depth information about Hitler and the Holocaust. Devastated by the things he learned, the boy had wept and cried as a result, but his attitude changed completely and Nazism was never a game to him again.

We should be vigilant in limiting graphic images.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Visual images will tell a story words will not and they can be very useful in helping children understand historical or current events.But disturbing images can leave lasting ill effects and once such an image has been imprinted upon a child’s mind, there’s no removing it. Personally, I avoid violent or graphic images altogether, (for my own sake as much as for my children’s,) but if they’re introduced at all, I certainly think they should be reserved for children who are unquestionably mature enough to handle them.

And graphic doesn’t necessarily mean bloody. Admittedly, I don’t deal well with the sight of blood, but some of the most horrific and disturbing images I have ever seen were black-and-white photographs that showed no bloodshed. We should be cautious, even overly guarded, in the images we allow our children to be exposed to. At some point, they will see things we don’t want them to see regardless of our best efforts to shield them, but let it never be a result of our own disregard.

We should be wise enough to recognize when enough information is enough.

We’re living in the “information age” when news and an endless supply of related photographs and video clips are instantly accessible to us 24/7. But rather than really satisfying our need to know, sometimes it seems the easy accessibility of information only makes us hungry for more information! It can be easy to allow our curiosity or our sympathy or our grief to consume us with a news story. For the sake not only of our children, but of ourselves, sometimes we need to turn it all off.

If ever in my life I learned that lesson, it was after the events of September 11, 2001. It just so happened we were days from closing on our first house and had moved from an apartment into my parents’ home to avoid paying another month’s rent. Like most people in this country, I suppose, for that day and the three or four days that followed it I was consumed with news from the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. I listened to every story, read every article, and watched every video I could find.

It was a horrific story that touched all of us. There was nothing wrong with the feelings I felt and the desire I had to know, to be informed, but by the fourth or fifth day, it began to take effect. I finally forced myself to stop watching it and listening to it and reading it and still September 11th was two weeks or more behind me before I was able to get a decent night’s sleep.

Sometimes the information overload is too much for us as parents, so of course in even less time it can be too much our children. The information we give them should inform them, but when it begins to frighten or confuse or disrupt their peace of mind in any way, then we’ve taken it too far. I’d far rather stop sharing information too soon than later wish I’d stopped sooner.

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Incidentally, we did find a book about World War II for my daughter, one I thought gives a good overview of the war without giving too many details or sharing images that might keep us both up at night.

She knows, and she’ll continue to learn, that we live in an evil world. I hope to protect her as much as I can for as long as I can, all the while being careful to remember words that should be of great comfort to us all when we come face to face with the world’s greatest darkness:

“Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” -Romans 5: 21