home-school happenings
Talking to your kids about politics By Nicole McKeon WNC Parent columnist
I don’t know about you guys, but our home phone has been bombarded by robo-calls from both political parties over the last several months. In the last couple of weeks, they have really ramped up the effort. The other night we received a call from one of the two presidential candidates. I won’t tell you which one, but I hung up the phone as soon as I heard his voice. My son asked me who it was, and I told him. He then asked me why I hung up. I answered that I had already determined who I was going to vote for, and that I didn’t have time to listen to a recorded call from someone I didn’t respect. My son looked at me and walked away.
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He must have been giving it some thought because later on he asked me, “Mom, what’s voting, why does it matter so much? “ Clearly, he knew what voting is. He has voted in our family to eat a certain meal or watch a certain television program — he was asking a much bigger question. What we discussed that night included specifically, but not in this order: What voting is, why we vote, why some people don’t vote, what a political party is, why people join a particular political party, how people decide who to vote for, and who my husband and I were planning on voting for. Talk about a huge lesson, which took place in the bathtub! It really gave me a reason to pause and ponder all the questions that my 7-yearold had asked, and, oddly enough, helped me gain some clarity about why I need to vote, which, in my despair over the corruption in politics, I had considered not
doing. We watched the debates as a family. My husband and I are very vocal about what we believe and why we believe it. However, we think it is important for our children to understand that not everyone agrees with what we believe. Honestly, Graeme fell asleep about 10 minutes into the first debate, he made it a little longer for debate No. 2, and he slept through the entire VP debate. (You can draw your own conclusions.) I have made it a habit to take my children with me when I vote. I remember going with my mom, who considered it a privilege to vote, as she immigrated to the United States and became a citizen when she was in her 20s. I remember it all seemed very mysterious and kind of scary to me when I was little. I didn’t want my kids to feel this way. I wanted them to be excited about voting and being a citizen of our country.
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