They start active shooter drills in Pre-K. That’s 3-4 years old. You’re kids are going to be more likely to be shot at school than a police officer after 20 years of service. Homie, they get told.

That… really depends on your politics. It could range from ‘There are bad people who want to hurt us’ to ‘we are bad people who hurt people and sometimes they decide to try to hurt us back.’

I have 18 month old twins. They’re not old enough to explain things too, but I ponder this type of thing a lot.

Basically my plan is multi-faceted, but I’ll acknowledge up front that it’s untested and likely contain grave errors, but like any parent since the dawn of time I’ll try to learn from my errors and adjust my strategy.

I’m not going to dumb anything down. If you’re old enough to wonder where babies come from then you’re old enough to understand that males produce sperm and women produce an egg and the two combine to produce a baby. That doesn’t mean a 4 year old needs to learn about STDs or abortion or rape, just that there’s no harm nor shame in learning.

It’s going to take a lot of time. Not to explain things, but to maintain a relationship where my kids feel comfortable asking me about awkward things. Not “why is the sky blue” but “why do I feel this way” or what ever.

Also, I plan to be honest and frank about the limitations of my knowledge. This is something that as an adult I find frustrating about my own childhood. My parents did their best within their means and societal norms, but whenever they didn’t know something they just made it up usually within some kind of religious framework. If I know part of the answer then I’ll acknowledge that I don’t have the whole answer and suggest how we might learn more.

To answer your actual question though, I don’t think one really explains terrorism on any given day. Like you could explain that terrorism is the use of fear for a political or ideological objective, but that’s not really an understanding is it. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to understand people’s motivation for this type of hatred and I hope my children do too.

I’m guessing that’s why we had fairytales. Those should still work no?

Also, It’s not like humanity hasn’t faced bigger horrors than 9/11 in it’s pasta humanity has faces much MUCH graver horrors than that. Hiroshima comes to mind, and what about the black plague? The kids were alright, somewhat.

Kids are resilient, just don’t push them off a cliff. Start explaining that there are less nice people in the world that don’t like to share cookies, and take it from there

That’s what story books are for they exist to explain that there is evil in the world & not all people can be trusted. Red Riding Hood teaches stranger danger, & other traditional stories teach other lessons. Just because these stories aren’t real doesn’t mean the lessons they hold are less valuable. Tell them a fairytale & explain how people in the real world can be a wolf but you may not see their fur or fangs. The fairytale elements allow a child to learn & they can apply the lessons when they face a situation that reminds them of the fairytale.

There’s no real art to it. It’s done the same way you grew up in a world where horrible shit had happened 20 years before you were born. You just sort of internalize it over time. Or not.

Long before they’ll ask on their own, they’ll learn about it in school every and ask you questions prepared by their teacher about how it affected you.

sit around the campfire, and tell them how bush destroyed a huge us building and killed us citizens in order to kill more people somewhere else.