At that same time, the Watergate hearings were being shown daily, and I watched them while most kids watched The Brady Bunch . By the time President Richard Nixon resigned, I could identify John Sirica, the former boxer and chief judge who presided over the trials of Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, by his wiry eyebrows. My young life was impacted by presidential misconduct, the energy crisis, the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the recession that followed. The only time I experienced information overload was while watching Dan Rather’s five-part documentary on the nuclear arms race, The Defense of the United States , at age 14. My conservative parents were not prepared for the anti-war feelings that emerged after I watched the documentary’s simulation of a 15-megaton nuclear attack on Strategic Air Command. While those were strange and nightmarish years, our children now live in a time of full-contact political rhetoric on television and social media, global climate change, Black Lives Matter protests against police violence and a deadly pandemic that has been unnecessarily politicized. Compared to my son’s experience of staying home for most
of his 15th year of life to avoid contracting the coronavirus, the 1970s were like summer camp. But Sam was born into a consequential time. When he was 3-and-a-half years old, the United States elected its first Black president. We pointed out President Barack Obama on television and taught Sam to say his name. By the time the 2012 election rolled around, he could talk about the issues with greater clarity than most 7 year olds. As a freshly minted 10-year-old, he was ready to talk when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision that legalized gay marriage in 2015, and we did. We prepared him with the facts, regardless of our being cisgender straight parents, because facts are always more valuable than opinions. Today, I spend a significant part of each week writing about politics, but as a longtime journalist, I back up my opinions with hard facts. As such, most of our discussions at home are fact-based rather than uncontrolled deployment of opinions. My wife and I are political animals, but we ground our political ideals in a foundation of reality. So, when any politician showers their
opponent with ad hominem attacks or a cascade of lies, we back up and try to discern the truth buried in all the shrapnel of political warfare. The results are gratifying since Sam can now watch the news and divine the truth while positively identifying the falsities. This was, to be sure, a gradual process, but sometimes the reality of life in 2020 broadsides parents. A truth tailored to your child’s specific sensitivities is far more effective than a lie, or even simple omission, designed to protect them from emotional harm. By having frequent and casual discussions — not lectures — about current events and politics, most parents can gauge how to approach even difficult talks about race, gender, human rights and the politics that surround them all. Sam is known to his classmates as having strong opinions about all of those things, and as we find ourselves in the midst of an extremely consequential election, he is vocal in defending his principles. Most importantly, he is fully capable of calling me out when he sees me going off the rails and can tell when I am spouting opinions rather than verifiable facts. Everyone in our house has political opinions, but he knows what those smell like.
METROFAMILYMAGAZINE.COM / OCTOBER 2020 17
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