Another Thing to Overcome

 I’ve discovered a lot of people online discussing this recently, and it’s helped me feel not so alone. 

Many people are talking about how when they were children, their parents pointed to major catastrophes in the news and told them that these things were their fault, just so they could have some laughs. A young woman online described how she was in second grade when 9/11 happened. Her mother would point to images of it on tv and tell her that she caused that. She was a junior in high school when she realized that she actually didn’t cause 9/11. When she confronted her mother about it, her mother accused her of not being able to take a joke. 

Others chimed in with their experiences of the same thing. Luckily, I was already an adult when 9/11 happened, but my parents did the same thing with the challenger explosion, the baby that fell into the well, and the Ethiopian famine. Even though you come to understand when you’re older that these things are beyond your control, there are still intrusive thoughts that come with the trauma of that. For me, there tends to be over apologizing and over compensating. 

It never occurred to me that joking with your kids in such a manner was so common. I’m glad our generation is open about things.