Ashley Lefrak Grider on answering tough questions from kids

“Pulleys,” I said. “Pirates use pulleys to get leverage. Or they put the cannon on wheels…to decrease friction.” We’d recently read a book about pulleys and leverage and how wheels decrease friction. For a microsecond I enjoyed the illusory satisfaction that, by using these words in a new context, I was winning at something.

A quick glance at his face told me he was not into the physics of the thing. He wanted to know something else.

“Why do people want to kill eachother?”

My son still says “each other” as if it were alloneword. He says “aminals” instead of “animals” and “losted” instead of “lost” but somehow, already, he is onto the cause of war.

W H AT, O R W H Y, O R H O W, O R H O W C O M E ? It’s impossible to predict when the big questions will arrive. Typically they start with little technical concerns that aren’t so hard to answer. “What’s inside bones?” he asks, innocuously enough. The answer is still leaving my mouth when I’m walloped by the follow-up: “When, exactly, will you and Dad die?”

These heavy hitters are intermingled with questions that sound like either pure nonsense or riddles designed to grow my mind if only I gave them their proper due. “What is yesterday?” he asks. I try responding straightforwardly, but where to start? Memory? Time? Orbital revolution? “The day before today,” for whatever reason, does not satisfy. I can smell my neurons frying.

I’m not saying the questions I field are consistently paradigm shifting. I would prefer chipping desiccated gum from a hot stretch of pavement than respond to a few. One son recently asked, “Why does Dad have no boobs?” What intrigues and feels instructive is hearing, in each new question, how my children angle themselves toward their surroundings for maximum absorption. I’ve been shown again and again how a question can evolve from the seemingly simple to something more layered. “Why are we in the car?” turns quickly to “Why do cars make noise?” My eyes will be midway to a complete blink when I hear, in the momentary flutter of darkness, “Why is moving sound?”

“I don’t know,” I say. Often. I don’t know, I-don’t-know, Idontknow. A mountain of maternal “I don’t knows” reaches new heights each day. I don’t know the steps by which paper is made or how a building’s foundations are laid. I don’t know the history of ninjas or the mechanics of…almost anything. It turns out I know practically nothing, really, about anything. Really. My knowledge of the world could be better described as not-knowledge punctuated by random facts.

This may sound like a fast track to humiliation, but it’s not. The questions mark a welcome shift in our relationship. While I adored my boys as babies, the benefits of looking after them seemed to accrue, largely, with them, in the satisfying curve of new thigh fat or the occasional toothless grin. I felt mothering to be mostly an act of giving. Now that my boys are a bit older, our time together feels newly nourishing. Our conversations burst with what Robert Louis Stevenson called “random provocations.” To be in the presence of this roving, open curiosity, unlimited by preconception, snaps me to a level of attention that feels, in many ways, like the point of being alive.

C E R TA I N W H O P P E R S , T H O U G H , like my son’s question about why there is war, have started to arrive with increased frequency. These no-joke questions—and in the past months they’ve ranged in topic from divorce to poverty, child soldiers to environmental destruction—have begun to make me squint with feigned focus at nothing whatsoever while heavily sweating, my way of registering the vast distance between what I want to say and what I ought to be saying. What I want is to say, breezily, “Oh, it’s complicated,” followed by, “Let’s have a show of hands for pretzels!” What I want is for the responses to my child’s hard questions to match his goodness, his wish for everyone, everywhere, to be basically safe and happy and OK. What I want is to give him the answers he hopes for, to tell him the world is the way he imagines it should be, and also not to be lying. A B O U T

What I sense, however, is that when he formu- T H E A U T H O R lates his Questions, he is owed some version of Ashley Lefrak Grider’s writing the truth, by which I mean not Answers but gen- has appeared uine conversation. When my son asked the cannon- in McSweeney’s Internetinspired question about war, I wanted to ignore Tendency, him, tell him to go play, change the topic, all things The Rumpus, I’ve done in the past. Instead, this time, I dug in. and Salon. She lives in

“Oh, it’s really dumb. I mean, it’s awful,” I started. Swarthmore, “But sometimes people resolve their conflicts Pennsylvania. with weapons instead of talking.” I refrained from addressing the outmoded nature of the cannon and the techniques of modern warfare to my wide-eyed child, but I was compelled to continue with this keeper: “People hurt each other in an attempt to resolve their conflicts. It’s not efective, and also people die, so it’s terrible and sad.”

He was silent. Small wonder. “Efective”? “Resolve”? Half the words were Greek to him; the other half were super scary.

He repeated: “Why do people want to kill eachother?”

I reminded myself that he has nightmares about characters in kids’ books. He thinks that any rustle in the leaves is “really, probably a vemo-mous snake.” He was convinced there were monsters in his room until we made a dream catcher and, magically, they disappeared. I thought of all his 4-year-old fears and fantastic thinking and decided I owed him a strain of honesty tempered by love. “Most people don’t want to kill each other,” I said. “But sometimes, once in a while, there’s a war…between countries.”

I was far from crushing it. “War” is a word he doesn’t understand. “Countries” is an abstraction he barely gets. The other day he shouted from a cardboard box he was sitting in with his little brother, “We’re on a ship leaving Pennsylvania and heading to Philadelphia!” Also, mine was a questionable form of honesty. “Sometimes” there’s war. There’s been war every second since you were born, kid.

He continued, asking, “I won’t go to war, though, Momma. Right?” At last it sank in that this was, in its sun-drenched, suburban, blue-skied way, a terrible moment. I said, “I hope not. I would not want you, or any child, to go to war.” I was awash in a wave of unjustifiable anger at the parkside cannon. I was also starting to resent his relentless line of questioning. The pause between us grew longer while he digested what I was saying and I parsed how to be clear but not completely terrifying. Either what I said was not sinking in or my own bewilderment was being communicated too well and he didn’t like the unresolvedness of the whole thing. So he asked a version of the same question for the third time: “Why do some people go to war?”

“They think it’s the right thing to do,” I tried, “to protect their country and their values.” I did not mention nationalism, or the military-industrial complex, or the impossible economic strain that causes many to join the armed forces. There is only so much one can accomplish in a morning.

Finally, he had enough of me and this abstract business about countries and values and killing eachother. The swings had started their cranky song, and he was suddenly aware of where we were. Our exchange ended as abruptly as it had begun. The seesaw called.

And me? I was left standing there by the car, confronting a few questions of my own. What am I doing? How did I get to this moment? Why is moving sound?

Mom?

The Vets Will S e e You Now

A N S W E R S T O Y O U R H A I R I E S T P E T Q U E S T I O N S

B y S a r a h G r o s s b a r t

B E AT T H E H E AT

We like to take our dog to the lake with us. Can he get sunburned? If so, how can I protect him against the UV rays?

Your pup can feel the burn. Dogs with lighter skin, thin coats, or no hair (think Chinese crested and Mexican Hairless breeds) are most vulnerable, notes veterinarian Mary Gardner, but all canines are susceptible to burns on their noses and bellies. The best way to avoid overexposure is to dodge the harsh rays between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., she says, but you can also dress your pup in UV-protective clothing or use a nongreasy sunscreen with UVA and UVB barriers (such as Petkin Doggy Sunstick, $9; amazon.com). It’s also safe to use baby sunscreen, assuming it’s zinc-free. Should he soak up too much sun, treat him with aloe or Solarcaine Aloe Extra Gel ($6; target.com). “As long as a product is good for babies,” says Gardner, “it’s usually good for animals.” O U T O F T H E I R S H E L L

We’re considering getting a hermit crab. What should I know about them first?

“They’re quite social, so get at least two,” says veterinarian Kristin Claricoates Valdes. While not exactly crabby, these pets are particular. Two small crabs require a tank at least 20 gallons in size, kept between 75 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit and at 75 to 85 percent humidity. “They breathe through gills, so they need moisture to function,” explains Valdes. They also need hiding spots (halved logs or coconuts), bowls of dechlorinated fresh water and salt water (use dechlorinated aquarium salt) to submerge in, and a mix of protein (fresh shrimp, bloodworms) and fruit (blueberries, mango) to eat. Also key: time to warm up to you. “Leave them in their tank for a few days,” says Valdes. “When they don’t hunch in their shell when you look at them, wait another day and try to hold them. Over time, they get pretty friendly.”

Vet te d by real simple

Kiehl’s Cuddly-Coat Grooming Shampoo and Spray-N-Play Cleansing Spritz Leave it to a trusted skin-care brand to give your pup a shinier and freshersmelling coat with soap-free shampoo infused with chamomile flower extract. Use the spray between baths for a quick refresh. TO B U Y: Shampoo, $17, and spritz, $13; kiehls.com. M O U T H I N G O F F

My cat has terrible breath. Is there anything I can do at home to help?

If your cat has plaque, your vet can perform a cleaning, then show you how to do regular brushups to avoid coming in for a dental visit more than the recommended every two years. Brush at least weekly, using a finger brush and poultry-flavored enzymatic toothpaste, says veterinarian Gayle O’Konski. The trick is to avoid yanking open her mouth. “Slip your finger onto the outside of her teeth,” says O’Konski. “Feel where the gum meets the tooth and concentrate there.” Start slowly, “eventually working up to longer sessions,” advises veterinarian Nancy Kay, and offer a treat afterward (try DentaLife Chicken Flavor Treats, $3; petco.com). If her smelly breath continues, have your vet check for an underlying medical issue.

O U R E X P E R T S

MARY GARDNER, DVM, L A P O F LOV E V E T E R I N A RY H O S P I C E , LO S A N G E L E S N A N CY KAY, DVM , AU T H O R O F S P E A K I N G F O R S P OT G AY L E O’ KO N S K I , DVM , M O R R I S A N I M A L H O S P I TA L , G R A N G E R , I N D I A N A K R I ST I N C L A R I C OAT E S VAL D E S , DVM , C H I C AG O E XOT I C S A N I M A L H O S P I TA L , C H I C AG O