What Happened To That Worm, Mommy?

MY MOM loves horseracing. Her best friend, Betty, got her hooked on “the horsies”, as they call them, about thirty years ago and together, they have been to The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and The Belmont Stakes, where Betty’s horse, Crème Fraiche, took home the roses in 1985. So when my daughters showed an inevitable interest in horses, my mom was a ready guide. A year ago, she took them over to Betty’s farm to see a baby foal who was born in the night, and this year, my girls have begun watching horse races on TV and making little bets with my mom (because you can never start gambling early enough).

A month ago, my mom called Georgia, my nearly five year-old, and they talked at length about Barbaro, an undefeated colt that was favored to win The Kentucky Derby. We looked at his picture in the paper, we TiVo-ed the Derby, we cheered when he won. Later that week, Georgia got a dollar in the mail. Her bet had paid.

In the lead up to The Preakness, my mom and Georgia talked many times. My daughter even started correcting me in her most condescending tone, the one she reserves mostly for her little sister, “His name is BarbAro, not BarbEro.” Again, we looked at his picture in the paper and set the TiVo.

But then, a few minutes after the big race, I got a message from my mom.
“You might not want to let Georgia watch The Preakness. Barbaro was hurt. It’s so sad,” she said, with a hitch in her voice. But Edward had already taken Georgia down to the TV room to cheer on the favorite.

“Edward, hold up--” I called down the stairs.

Whispering at the top of the stairs, with Georgia staring up at us, we quickly evaluated the pros and cons of letting Georgia see a racehorse’s leg break. The cons were that it might be truly disgusting, and the running commentary might trigger an onslaught of questions, like “What are they talking about: put him down?” The pros were, well, I couldn’t think of any.

“What are we gonna do? This kind of thing is part of life,” my husband said, making me feel impractical and over-protective.

I know accidents are a part of life. I know that sometimes cysts turn out to be tumors and forgetfulness becomes Alzheimer’s and all goldfish die. What I didn’t know is exactly why we should opt to share the truth of accidents, illnesses, and death with our children before life requires it. Won’t it come soon enough on its own?

But the truth is, it had already come, not only because Disney seems to have an binding clause with its writers that all kids’ movies start with a dead mother, but also because worms dry up on sidewalks and house plants turn brown and die (in my house, anyway) and pets are put to sleep.

I polled my friends about their mortality communications strategy but they varied so greatly in their beliefs that I had no choice but to turn to The Internet, where all answers await. It turns out there are at least three good reasons we should welcome opportunities to talk, in age appropriate terms, with our children about mortality.

One: Secrets are scary, scarier than the truth even. Hushed tones mean something bad is happening. Unexplained bad things, like mommy crying, quickly become fodder for the imagination. The same little minds that spin a yarn about a unicorn named Warren who lives on top of the castle garage (I’m quoting my daughter loosely here) can create darker, more personal stories when left with a shadowy, undefined sense that something isn’t right. And because kids are naturally solipsistic, they are apt to assume that either they caused the event to happen or that they event is going to happen to them next.

Two: A child’s safety depends on understanding the fundamental notion of danger and as soon as you start defining “danger”, you’re talking about, or around, death. “Why can’t I put a bag over my head?” “Why can’t I tie a scarf around my sister’s neck?” “Why can’t I go in the ocean by myself?” Even if you start by explaining benign causal relationships, like bare feet and splinters, it won’t be long until you’ll be pointing out the invisible lines of connections between nutrition and health, distractions and accidents, age and illness.

Three: The fragile, unpredictable, fleeting nature of life gives everything its meaning. If we always felt good, if we were never tested, if we never had to say goodbye, well, it’d be as if the favorite always won, and who would show up for that?