In true parenting and caregiver fashion, we spend a lot of our hopeful time pointing our young people toward the fantasy-filled possibilities of tomorrow, bedazzled with attainable dreams and enough “fill-in-the-blank” for everyone.

Believing that there will be a time for the stresses of adulthood, many of us would rather our kiddos focus on dreaming - fairy tales and magical lands - before the cold water of harsh reality hits their face. Dressed in our clothes of best intentions, it is often our hope to save our young people from the burdens of the real toils of the world. Surely, we often think, there will be ample time for stress and worry in adulthood. For now, let them just be kids!

It often branches from the seeds of our own personal wishes for more time to play and experience the world’s wonder as a child. Many of us recall the exact occasion when our child’s glasses were removed, and we realized that the world is a scary and rigid place. Perhaps it was seeing a classmate get bullied in school, seeing a hungry person on the street corner, or watching a neighborhood family’s belongings put out on the curb after losing their home.

Perhaps some of us adults just recently removed our child’s play glasses as we awakened to news reports of toddlers being zip-tied by ICE agents in the middle of the night in an open street.

Indeed, the world is a scary and rigid place.

It is often from a place of compassion that many caregivers want to protect young ones by shielding them from these horrors. However, just like racism, silence gets louder if we never talk about it. Like an open wound, failing to discuss wrongdoing festers…it grows bigger, infecting others around it. Then, we have an even bigger - and more costly - problem to sort out.

If we actually ever sort it out.

The only healthy way to prepare our young people for the world they stand to inherit is to introduce it to them in its current, broken, state. We must be honest about the fractures and the let-downs, embracing all of the accompanying emotions that result. By exposing the pain and hardships - using developmentally appropriate delivery - we give our children “permission” to experience and process these feelings, which leads to empathy.

Alice Walker once said, “This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.”

In other words, we are lost without empathy. All of us.

We must let the tears fall.

We need to see tears falling in order to recognize that people are hurting, and feel them for ourselves so we understand why tears are falling in the first place. Denying our young people of this reality will lead to a lopsided, self-centered worldview as they grow into adulthood, inhibiting their abilities to recognize when change is needed.

Indeed, empathy is the “secret sauce” of effective future leadership. Without it, people around us become transactional pawns, used as a means toward an end of reaching our goals. Their stories and dreams become the insignificant fairy tales that we coined ‘child’s play’, never to be taken seriously for real change. Thus, our young people become the cynical and suspicious people we worked so hard to protect them from in the first place.

So how do we approach this?

As uncomfortable as we may feel, we cannot simply change the subject. We must commit to answering our children’s questions as truthfully as we can using language that our kiddos are able to understand. Inviting questions and discussing how people might feel about what is happening are compassionate ways to invite introspection of our values as followers of Jesus and his ministry in advocating for the wholeness of all peoples.

We must be careful not to gaslight or minimize. We can all relate to feelings of fear, sadness, anxiety, and anger - even if the circumstances are different. By teaching our young people how to relate to the emotions instead of solely the experience, they learn how to recognize and appreciate the humanity in others.

Making room for the processing of harsh events that are witnessed is essential. Providing hugs and space for tears when the truth is shared is critical. It may seem counterintuitive, but we must share our vulnerability with our children - naming our feelings and uncertainty - giving them permission to sit in that liminal space with their feelings as well. And with us.

The truth is that bad things happen to people for reasons we don’t always understand or agree with. Jesus is also the truth - we can work to empathize with our persecuted siblings by seeking similar examples of Jesus’ engagement with those emotions in Scripture. Jesus has felt every single feeling that we have! This makes him a wonderful conversation partner.

Consider this flow of conversation, using age-appropriate language and imagery while allowing children’s responses to guide the processing:

• Can we imagine how “that event” may have made our friend feel?
• Have we ever felt that way before? When?
• What does Jesus teach us about caring for friends who experience that emotion?
• How would we feel if someone cared for us in that way?
• What might be some tangible ways we could show that person/people we care?
• How can I (as parent, caregiver, ministry leader) support my young one(s) in this effort?

It is only with Truth that we will ‘dare to dream’. And it is only with an empathetic heart that we will believe it will really come true.