Yesterday was a long day for our household. Just a lot of running around for errands, work meetings, and chauffeuring duties for the kid's classes. When she finally made it to bed, a full hour past her usual bedtime, I was too exhausted to read a story so I turned the lights off and offered to talk about world news instead.
Istanbul attacks were on my mind and all over the news and that was the first thing I talked about. I toned it down to the level at which the would-be second grader could understand. Bad guys, Syria, Turkey, Istanbul airport, hurt people, and she had heard enough. No bad guys news tonight, she said. She did not want to get bad dreams.
I should have known better. In my defense, I had already talked about Brexit with her the day before and I just could not think of anything else. She actually had pretty strong opinions on that subject- "well, if one friend wants to leave the team, everyone else will want to copy and there might be fighting".
I gave up trying to come up with news on my own that did not include bad guys or political conflicts. Opened Time for Kids on my cell phone browser and started reading the first thing I saw. It was about the daring rescue of a sick worker from the South Pole. That had a pretty exciting picture of the US research base in the south pole. The article talked about how harsh the winters there are and how risky such rescue might be. The rescue flight started in Canada and reached Rothera, the British base in Antarctic peninsula. From Rothera to the south pole station, it took the special flight ten hours of flying in dark, windy and extremely unpredictable weather conditions. This kind of stuff fascinates me. Only 48 people live in that station! Well, now 47. Anyway, it was a story that had a happy ending but still, not quite the happy news that my kid was looking forward to, what with sick people and dangerous airplane rides involved.
I went straight down to new movies next, entertainment section to the rescue! Finding Dory immediately caught her interest. Who does not like a forgetful fish! We made plans to watch this movie. We actually would watch Finding Nemo first for a refresher and then this movie. She used to be terrified of movies. However, after she watched Jungle Book on her father's insistence on Father's day, she has turned a corner for movie watching. With this happy and conflict-free news, she fell asleep. And she looked so peaceful and content.
The situation just minutes before this news brief, however, was quite the opposite. I found my girl sobbing at bed time. Apparently there was an incident involving her and her friend at day care that day. One said something that made the other cry. Teacher made them work it out and they did. I found those two playing together when I went to pick her up. It is just that somehow the whole incident sat on her mind and the emotions came out pouring at the end of the day when she was tired and vulnerable. I could tell she just did not like the fact that she and her friend had a conflict. She assumed that everyone in daycare, kids and teachers, disliked her now because of this incident. The poor girl just could not handle the sadness she felt from that thought. She even woke up today with those feelings and fears intact, enough to declare that she does not want to go to her daycare anymore.
Eventually she did go to daycare and ended up having a great day. She refused to come home when I went to pick her up extra early. She even had a chance to have a short play date with that friend, one she had conflict with yesterday, and she was surely back to her chipper self.
Just a tiny little conflict with her friend was all it took for her world to turn upside down for a night. She did not recover from it until she knew for sure that everything was fine with her friendship. And then there are people that plant bombs and routinely blow up other people by the dozens. These people are adults, and not a bunch of seven year olds. These people are real and not fictional characters from books. They don't just say a semi-harsh word and offend their best friend, they actually kill innocent people. My little girl could not sleep because she hurt her friend's feelings. I fail to understand these terrorists- weren't they all seven at one point? They must not have had any friends growing up.
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