When is a good time to become World Aware?

J is home today as it is the FIRST DAY OF SUMMER (as he loudly proclaims). The last day of Kindergarten was yesterday (which he spent at home with Strep, is now recovered), and he is excited about the summer, especially the summer camp he is going to (horses! a creek! a swimming pool!).

This afternoon we were walking into the HEB to get some groceries and a panel van with two concert speakers strapped to the top drove by the front door. Blaring from these speakers was a girl talking. She was informing people about the number of people who are executed each year in the US and Texas in particular. She went on about lethal injection and capital punishment as we made our way into the store. I would guess they picked this spot as there is an early voting location next door, but it was a bit surreal.

This led to the inevitable questions from J. "What's capital punishment?"

We discussed how bad people have various grades of bad and how some of the super baddies are sentenced to die themselves. J was interested, but not overly so, so I felt like I had managed this speed bump well.

It did makes me wonder when it's ok to expose kids to things like capital punishment and the like. We haven't been shielding them, per se, but we have been avoiding the question. I tend to turn off NPR when they are in the car, we don't turn the news on in the evenings when it used to be a staple pre-kids. The few times they caught something about the Iraq war we have had to have a sad conversations about the soldiers, President Bush, why we are there, etc. All hard questions to answer, so I guess we started avoiding the question.

When I was a kid, and there were only three "real" channels and the other one or two on UHF, I remember my parents turning on the news nightly and me proclaiming my immense boredom. Yawn, the oil crisis, yawn, the hostages in Iran, yawn, bombing Syria. World events were not particularly interesting to me, so I don't know how much explaining my parents had to do about iffy things I had overheard. Apparently I was so disinterested that my 5th grade teacher commented on it on my report card. I am paraphrasing since I don't have it here, but it said something like "Suzy is very interested in her own world and things immediately within it, she is quite unaware of the world outside of her." Actually, I remember it was a bit more catty than that, but you get the gist.

Now that I read the paper, watch the news, listen to NPR and generally hold up my end of the adult bargain, I wonder when I should start to permeate the kids with the outside world. I am starting to think that explaining how the world is scary or crazy or sad is a small price to pay for my kids to who know it exists and that the tv isn't just for Backyardigans and Indiana Jones movies.