I've been such a horrible blogger lately. It's not that I haven't been writing, it's that I haven't been writing here. Hopefully I can take some time over the next few weeks to catch up on everything happening in our crazy lives right now.
In the meantime, I had a little something in the New York Times last week about trying to explain war to my kids. This has been, hands down, the hardest thing about being part of a military family for me. My boys ask questions and I don't want to confuse them, but I feel dishonest covering complex issues like war and death with platitudes deoid of nuance and the political realities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anyway, this was a wonderful opportunity and I actually got some good suggestions in the comments (I just ignored the "baby killer" taunts). Read on:
Explaining war to kids is always hard, but when you’re part of a military family, the task is even more difficult because it’s so personal. When my sons were little, their father was in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer with the Seabees, the Navy’s construction division. The boys understood what the military was in a very hazy “It must involve a ship, Daddy going away, and a large yellow bee” kind of way. But because their father wasn’t directly in harm’s way, I was able to gloss over hard questions about war and just concentrate on the fun parts of having a dad in the military from a toddler’s perspective — serving the country and wearing really cool hats.
When my brother, a soldier in the Ohio National Guard, went off to Kuwait three years ago, that explanation no longer seemed sufficient..... Read the rest of this post on the New York Times website....
