This morning C made two small towers and then plowed them down, smiling at me and saying, “Look, Mom, it’s the Twin Towers!” After I scraped my jaw off the floor I said, “We do NOT joke about that!!” My genuinely confused son asked why, realizing how horrified I was, and I reminded him of how many lives were lost that day.

Imagine my dismay when my poor son responded in equal horror, “WHAT??? I thought the towers were EMPTY!”

Oh, major fail on my part.

We have talked about September 11th and the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and the flight in the field but not wanting to overload my young kids, I had not gone into a lot of details. They knew about the terrorists and a bit about what the motivation and America’s response, but I didn’t explain about all of the lives lost. I didn’t tell my young children about the full airplanes of people (I realize now they thought the terrorists had flown their own planes, not hijacked flights) or everyone at work that day in the towers (which my kids thought were empty buildings) or the responders from the fire stations and police stations or those in the street racing to help or the soldiers in the Pentagon.

I do think children need to receive age appropriate information, but it was my mistake for not filling in more details as time went by and they were ready to learn more. Because I didn’t, my kids had a very badly misconstrued understanding of what happened. They were ready to hear more, we’ve talked about the Holocaust and other tough issues since we first learned about September 11th. I should have gone back to continue the discussion, and I won’t make that mistake again!

(Recognizing that C is only 9, and that’s still awfully young to get many details about topics that even adults cannot really grasp. No one can understand the magnitude of the horror of these events so I will continue to be gentle in how we explain.)