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opinionAlso in this section: Readying children for the inevitable by W. E. Gutman Psychologists (and armchair pedagogues) are having a field day exhorting parents to sugarcoat --- or altogether suppress --- the gravity of recent world events. Their motives might have merit if terrorist incidents were rare, distant and isolated anomalies not worthy of sustained concern. The validity of such counsel in this new age of cosmic turmoil is dubious in the extreme. Conversely, the long-term consequences of spoon-fed naiveté can be devastating. Surely, young children should be spared undue exposure to disquieting events. But this is not (nor has it ever been) the best of all possible worlds. Pretending that evil does not exist will not cow Beelzebub and the fiends who do his bidding. In the current geopolitical context, I submit that it is this very head-in-the-sand attitude toward real and formidable dangers that left the US, with its multibillion-dollar intelligence budget, shamefully unprepared for the dastardly assault of September 11. The same imprudence and lack of anticipation that delivered Madrid and London to a handful of madmen now endanger other cities around the world. Although we can never be totally impervious to aggression and bloodshed, we can and must once and for all acknowledge mankind's propensity for lunacy and evil. A paternal aunt who survived Auschwitz refused to tell her American-born daughters about the Holocaust and the horrors she personally endured. "This is not the time; they could never understand," she argued. The time never came and my cousins grew up in a counterfeit Shangri-La, two pampered prima donnas who would be rudely jarred from the smugness of their rose-colored torpor to awaken, as young adults, in the cannibalistic realm their mother had tried so valiantly to deconstruct. For my part, growing up in war-torn Europe, I had learned the value of stealth and silence, and rehearsed denying being a Jew in half a dozen languages at an age --- I was four or five --- when most children take perverse delight in shrieking, gesticulating and being in everybody's face. I am none the worse for having confronted and survived immutable reality. Healthy pessimism --- the art of conscious survival --- tempers undue expectations. It also helps anticipate, with dignity and resolve, not histrionics, what cannot be prevented. Precocious and intuitive, my two New York-born sons, unlike my cousins, insisted on knowing. Atlas and history books in hand, personal memories at the ready, I obliged. I also taught them why the slogan, "Never Again," had been coined. What they distilled from this unexpurgated instruction are (a) the certitude that "it" can happen again, anywhere --- perhaps even in the most unlikely setting; (b) the wisdom to rely on hindsight; and (c) the will to fight back. Predictably, my sons grew up to be cynics. Cynicism is a very small price to pay in exchange for the gift of perspicacity. Children do not ask to be born. The least we can do is prepare and harden them against a world not of their own choosing. Kids are resilient and highly adaptable --- far more so than we give them credit for. Telling children the truth --- suitably couched in language they can understand --- and assuring them of our unconditional love will not spawn "a new bogeyman," as Freudian-schooled analysts suggest. The bogeyman has always existed. He is here to stay. He just crawls out from under the bed now and then to show his sinister mug. Yesteryear's idyllic Rockwellian canvas of innocence and amiability has long since been replaced by real-time renditions of apocalypse. Preparing children for the inevitability of a troubled future is the most gut-wrenching of all parental obligations. It may prove salutary in the long run.
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