Discussing 9/11

Recently Robert decided that he was going to read the book "I Survived The Attack of September  11, 2001"  ( you can check amazon for this book)which I thought was a great idea and timing, but when he finished it this week, he had questions as he was only 9 months old when it happened. As he asked questions, Garrett had looked at the cover of the book and then he asked questions about "Well what is 9/11?" "Why would they do that?" and "How did the towers fall?" When he started to ask these questions, it dawned on me that the school wasn't really discussing this topic (which Robert confirmed for me) and that neither of them had seen the events of the day. So we discussed it a over a couple of days this week. We have magazines from that 9/2001 that we pulled out and looked at the pictures and the stories and then we searched 9/11 videos.  As we sat here by the computer, watching the events, I tried to explain what we knew when it happened, how scary it was and some of the aftermath.

IT was a very god learning experience, but I made sure that we had lots of time (not a deadline) so that we could discuss as much as the kids wanted to. If you haven't discussed this with your kids, you might want to take that opportunity. It was a good time of discussion, learning and sharing. It let me boys know that I am real and that yes I was scared that day. And most importantly that we will be okay.

This book was a good starting point and maybe we should have read it together all three of us, but I'm not sure that Garrett was ready for separating the fiction and the real life events. But remember we were there and experienced the tragedy but our kids maybe weren't even twinkles in our eyes or were too small to even know that anything had happened.