rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

From my sister in London:

Q: sascha [her child] has been really scared to go to bed at night. tonight she told me that she was scared of robbers. she asked if there were any robbers in london and i said “well…” then she asked if robbers have guns and i said “sometimes”. [daddy] said that i should have lied and said no. she was shivering in her bed saying she didn’t want to sleep alone.

i told her that we live in putney because it is a very safe place to live and that there is no way any robber could get into our house. i don’t think this helped. should i have lied? Bear in mind that i have spent my WHOLE life being scared of robbers coming into my house….

My Answer:

In my opinion, until the kid is old enough to start not believing you,

LIE YOUR ASS OFF.

about those sorts of things. Lie and distract. That’s what I’ll be doing with gram.

Of course Gram also still sleeps in our bed. I figure that even if we got him out of our bed, he’d still come back in from time to time, so why get used to sleeping alone? Besides it’s freezing in his room and he warms up our bed, and his room’s kind of a mess anyway. This spring and summer is when we’re gonna try to get him to sleep alone.

But about death and heaven and robbers, I’d lie my ass off. This, I think, is what our parents did for us.

Here’s what I’d tell Sascha:

“There are no robbers in England.”
“There are no robbers where Gabba and Papa [grandparents] live.”
“Robbers are not allowed to have guns, so they don’t. If they did, the police would pick them up in an instant and put them in jail.”

“Robbers don’t care about little children. They just want money. If they take our money we can always get more.” (this is TRUE; the media have blown all child and adult kidnapping cases terribly out of proportion because they sell very well.)
“Robbers are people too, people who just don’t have enough money.”

God forbid if they ask about dying:

“Only very old or very sick people die.”
“When a person dies they go to heaven and they see everyone on earth and can talk with them on special occasions”
“Heaven is full of candy, chocolate, and everyone there is a real princess”
“Some people (like Auntie Rose) believe that all people come right back to earth after they die”
“Mommy and Daddy are not going to die for a very, very, very long time”
“You are not going to die unless you don’t listen to Mommy.”

I haven’t come up against this yet but Gram’s been slightly freaked out in bed lately. So we’ll see. Perhaps I am talking out of my ass, but this is what I will say. I will lie my pants off.