Parenting 9/11: five years and one month later
Events play tricks with our memories. September 11, 2001
does not seem to have been five years ago. It still echoes in our lives. We all
know what we were doing that day and recall it vividly. We know that our lives
changed then.
I learned that two airplanes had hit the towers of the WorldTradeCenter just before I
entered an examination room for the first “well child visits” of that day. A
mother and two daughters were waiting, shielded from the incredible news. I did
not know enough to tell them anything.
Throughout the visit — as the mother
asked questions about her daughters’ behavior, her parenting, school,
nutrition, and all the stuff of our lives with our kids — my mind tried to
make sense of the news. The pilots did this intentionally. It took a lot
of planning. It took a kind of courage. It was probably done by inspired young
men. How did these boys grow up to believe that this was the best thing they
could do? What did their parents do that led to this belief? What
responsibility do we all share? What did this have to do with my daily work with
parents and children?
As the awful information accumulated throughout the day,
these various thoughts finally flowed together into one stream. In some way,
all the world’s children are our children. What did we all do to raise these little boys to become young men who chose
death for so many as their ideal? How can we prevent children from growing up
this way?
It is just more than five short years later. There are
hundreds of children who lost parents on September 11, 2001… and thousands
since, in the aftermath. In every way we can, let’s help them choose life.
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2006.
