These moments, that truly test your parenting prowess, usually happen at the dinner table, in the car, or while brushing teeth. Your kid pauses, looks at you, and drops the question that instantly makes you realize that your little baby, is being exposed to the world outside your protective radius.
Mine happened to me on the drive to school one morning, one minute we were making sure he remembered his laptop, the next…
“Dad… is Donald Trump bad?”
I froze, taken aback by the randomness of it. I wasn’t expecting a pop quiz in parenting at 7am in the morning, on the school drop-off line.
But here’s a truth, and a realization that hit me afterward: the question wasn’t really about Donald Trump.
1. I Had To Recognize What Was Really Going On
Kids absorb more than we think. They hear headlines, overhear grown-ups debating, or catch snippets of playground politics.
When your child asks, “Is [a person] bad?” they’re not necessarily asking for your personal verdict.
I think, they’re testing the waters:
Can I talk to my Dad about this?
How do grown-ups decide what’s bad or good?
Am I supposed to think the same way my parents do?
I don’t think our job is to supply an answer. I feel like maybe, our job is to model the process of HOW to think. Which includes: how to gather information, how to consider mitigating factors, how to use that information to arrive at the best conclusion possible, and finally, how to be willing to adjust your conclusions if better information comes along.
2. I Decided To Start With Curiosity.
Instead of reacting with my own opinion, which I won’t share here either, I tried to flip the script. I asked him something along the lines of:
“What made you ask that?”
“What have you heard?”
“What do you mean by bad?”
In my opinion this does two things:
This has the ability to show your child that you’re interested in their thoughts, not just telling them what their thoughts should be.
It also helps you understand the source and context of their question, which allows you to determine the best path to take in answering.
3. My Go-To For Questions On Humanity is to Explain That People Are Complicated
I told him that:
“People are complicated. Everyone has done things that they’ve done well, and things they could have done better. And Sometimes, people strongly disagree about the things that person has done well, and the things that person could’ve done differently.”
I think this helps build the skill of recognizing nuance, and acknowledging the perspective is real, which I think we can all agree is something the world could use more of.
And again it teaches your child that the world unfortunately is not always black and white. There aren’t always easy answers.
4. Teach the Skill of Seeing More Than One Side
Without getting into you who’s “good” and who’s “bad”, you can explain:
People have different upbringings and environments, which can lead us to judge others, especially those unlike ourselves, and polarizing leaders. We measure them by our own values, of what we see as honesty, fairness, results, personality and policies.
- Helping our kids understand this tendency in ourselves and others, is an important step toward teaching them to think critically, listen openly, and form their own well-reasoned views.
Two people can see the same action and draw totally opposite conclusions.
The picture above this section is one of my all time favorites, as I think it perfectly describes many of the disagreements we have as human beings. Showing it to a child and discussing it may open their minds to others’ perspectives in ways talking may not.
5. End With an Invitation, Not a Verdict
This approach lets us end the conversation in a way that prompts them to think for themselves, rather than simply adopting our opinions as their own. It may also spark curiosity, leading them to ask you what your opinion is and how you arrived at it, which is a sign that you may have opened a new pathway for how they see and digest the world.
And as they grow older, remind them that learning about people in history and in the news is an opportunity to think for themselves, to listen to ask questions, and to decided what it is they believe.
Let them know that you’ll always be there, ready to talk, ready to listen and ready to help them see the world with clarity and compassion, through their own eyes.
I think that this could be a tactic in parenting that helps build independent thinking.
The Bigger Picture
If we teach our kids that every complex question has a “right” answer, or that our opinions on the matter are the correct ones all the time, they may grow up simply repeating our views, and not doing the cognitive work to arrive at their own.
Yet, if they learn that complex questions require curiosity, listening, and reasoning, they’ll grow up having the ability exercise an inner dialogue using facts and context to develop their own.
And, that, I THINK, in the long run, may be better than them simply agreeing with you.
This Dad’s Takeaway:
When politics comes up, I don’t feel like my role is to turn my child into a miniature political twin.
For me, as a father who wants them to be better than me, I think my role is to give them the tools to think clearly, see multiple perspectives, and derive logical conclusions no matter who’s in the headlines.
But… what do I know?, I am just a guy, trying to figure this dad thing out.
