How Young is Too Young?

When do we expose our children to the more unpleasant elements of our world through our worldschooling approach? This has always been a question I had towards the front of my mind, but was yet to consider with clarity or necessity until last week.

My eight-year-old son and I live in Malawi — a safe, friendly and sometimes noisy country where the economy is a constant frustration to its people, and where music and laughter can be heard as the norm. Last week, this relaxed society was stunned into silence when the end of the longest cyclone in history took hold of the south of Malawi.

If you saw the news, you’d have seen the landslides and the deathtoll. Social media, through its unfiltered nature, showed the more graphic details. I choose not to watch graphic videos, as they add nothing to my understanding. I just scroll past or delete, and usually then worry for the thousandth time about how my son will navigate this foreign virtual world when he’s old enough to have access.

I have always also shielded him from the news. I feel it is too abstract and will serve no other purpose than to scare and confuse him. But what do I do when the primary school two kilometres away has been packed with families who have lost everything, or when a child who sometimes comes for food comes to tell us he has lost his grandmother in the flood? This is what I have been wrestling with (often quite ineffectively) over the past few days.

First and foremost, I have to acknowledge that my dilemma comes from a place of privilege. So does my son’s situation of being able to be largely shielded from the brutal, incessant reality that so many, regardless of age, face at the moment.

Secondly, I didn’t even think to shield him from the difficulties faced by those closest to us. The lady who looks after my son when I’m at work came through the rain towards the end of the cyclone. She looked composed and calm, like nothing had happened, and politely demanded money for materials to fix the roof and for food — for her and her six neighbouring homes. One of the many things I love and admire about this woman is her dedication to sharing. It’s not about being Malawian, or being ‘a strong African woman’. It’s about being her.

Neither did I shield him when the man who we employ a few hours a day to do our gardening arrived with his ten-year-old daughter to explain that they had had to move house due to the storm and therefore needed double rent. When he met our childminder she said, in English, with a big smile, ‘How are you?’. He answered, with an equally wide grin, ‘Us? We are fine!’. They laughed together. Our gardener had, three days earlier, lost eight people from his village to the storms. These two people are a man and a woman with resilience and a positive attitude in the face of extreme adversity. They are not fine, but they deal with it. This is what I want my son to learn.

The man who picks up my son from school is, however, a different story. He lost his home and we haven’t seen him since. We know he is physically safe, but he has sent me a couple of phone messages expressing pain and anguish about what has happened. Conversations regarding him, I don’t allow my son to be privy to. This is an adult’s deep suffering. I can’t see what anyone will gain from exposing their child to it if they have a choice. I certainly can’t see what this man, who is close to my son, will gain from my son’s knowledge of his pain. Yet again, I am so glad I have that choice.

I credit Malawi’s biggest gift to us as a family as being a place where my son experiences no racism. This is about the biggest bubble I can give to my mixed heritage child. There is no value in experiencing racism. Yet, I never expected Malawi to teach my son and I how to conduct ourselves when the shit hits the fan. Get a grip, calm down, ensure you are safe and well, then check in on others.

I called a very good friend when I felt emotional during the tail end of the bad weather. I value her perspective and her world view. She said that she felt that, when there is no filter, we often experience anxiety and depression. She hadn’t seen the cyclone on the news because she doesn’t expose herself to the news. Much of her family lives in a country decimated by war, and she is a frontline worker in the UK’s National Health Service. This, added to her fundraising for hungry children at her kid’s school in the UK, means she sees enough. She creates her own bubble for her own wellbeing, in order to remain functioning and useful. This is what I have done this week for my child and also for me.

After the rain began to subside, people emerged from their own experiences. I didn’t realise this about natural disasters. They’re a bit like staying at home during covid — everyone experiences it in their own bubble. For some lucky ones it’s boring, and for some less lucky it is traumatic, scary and sometimes deadly. For us, apart from a bit of a flood through the front rooms, our house remained fine. I was feeling helpless and guilty, thinking I should be out there helping others in worse-hit areas. Yet I worried about the conditions becoming worse, and I had my son with me. I felt I was using my son as an excuse to stay cozy, and maybe he should come with me to see what other people were living with. I received a message from another friend, who works in a high-stress position in South Sudan, who advised, ‘All you can do is stay safe and extend that safety outwards.’ So that’s what I did. I created a bubble around my son, and a slightly larger one around myself. Then I tried to help while reading the signs. Here’s what I began to understand:

1. If it is of no use for him to learn a harsh lesson, don’t teach it.

2. If he learns a harsh lesson while witnessing the peace and resilience of the people going through it, he can learn it.

3. If he is insensitive, I will gently guide him.

5. A bonus observation was that well-meaning (usually) foreigners can make situations worse, not better. But there’s a whole other fat book there.

4. I will make big mistakes with all of the above.

Here’s a mistake. We gave the gardener and his daughter a lift home. We had a bottle of fizzy pop in the front seat as a friend was coming over later. My son made a huge deal of how excited he was to drink the pop, while all the while I grew silently more embarrassed and cross that he was making such a fuss in front of this girl who’d lost her house. In hindsight, it’s not surprising that she actually seemed utterly unbothered. After we dropped them home, I raised my voice and asked my son how he could be so insensitive as to go on about a fizzy drink when this girl owned next to nothing at the moment. I got a hold of myself and reminded myself he’s only eight. Making him feel bad accomplished nothing. Calmly explaining it would have been infinitely wiser. But I am not always wise.

My son has not shown many signs of being a natural empath in his short life. Yet when I told him we needed to quickly get all his spare warm clothes together for donations to the camp, he enthusiastically collected armfuls of them, to the point where I was returning things to his bedroom! It is the first time I have seen him freely give before thinking first of himself. I was proud of him. This is who I want my child to be. So I will keep this bubble wrapped carefully around him for as long as possible or as necessary, and try to be gentle. Yet, as he grows into manhood, I will advise him and model for him that we must create a bubble around ourselves, ensuring we are safe, then extending that safety outwards.