Breaking News

Whenever something bad or scary happens in the world, it's always hard to decide whether to shelter my boys from that information, or do my best to explain it at their level.  Yesterday the decision was made for me when Cael caught me watching the news coverage of the bombings at the Boston Marathon.

"Mom, what are you watching?"

"The news.  Something bad happened in a city a long way from here.  But we're safe, thankfully, so you don't have to worry." 

"What happened?"

I suppose I could have lied to him, a technique that has provided me with a number of parenting successes in the past, but I guessed that he'd seen a bit of the footage and would know I was lying.  (Although I was very tempted to tell him that all of the world's motorhomes had been stolen and crashed by five year-old boys who were now in solitary confinement, I decided to go with the truth.) 

"People were running a race and something happened that hurt a lot of them."

"Were they running with scissors?  You're not supposed to do that."

"I know, Cael.  But this wasn't about scissors.  Someone really naughty and obviously very sick in the head did it on purpose."

"Why would you want to watch that on TV?"

"I just want to know what's happening in the world.  And I'm hoping to hear that they have caught the person that did it."

"Iron Man could fight the bad guy."

I breathed a sigh of relief that he was no longer in question mode, because I didn't know how I could dance around the inevitable revelation that bombs were used as a weapon.  Instead, Cael's insight about the incident caught me off-guard just enough to keep me from calling up Boston police and having them hire my preschooler as a member of their team.

"Really, he could.  Iron Man and Captain America could fight him and catch him and then take him to the police.  And then when he's at the police station, the police officers should make him run a race with scissors.  And then he should have a time-out.  Like forever."

If only it were that easy.

Until then, I'll be hugging my boys tightly, with my ears on the television set and my heart with the people of Boston.

And one eye on the scissors.  Just in case.