The North, for six-year-olds

[ailbhe]

Today, at lunchtime, between mouthfuls of sardines and sweetcorn in tomato sauce (don't ask me, I just work here), my fresh-faced and innocent (more or less) six-year-old gazed idly around the room and her eye was caught by a map on the wall, drawn by a friend of ours.

She said, "Hey Mum, why is a bit of Ireland part of England?"

I opened and closed my mouth a few times. Then I stalled - "Do you mean why is part of Ireland part of the United Kingdom?" - and finally I (stammering) said "Well, for a long time, the government of England was in charge of ALL of Ireland, but the Irish people didn't like that much. So before your Nana was born, when my Nana was a little girl, the Irish government and the English government agreed that Irish people would be in charge of most of Ireland, and the English government would be in charge of just that little bit."

Then I thought about the Omagh bombing, which I think about every year now, because it was exactly eight years before Emer's birth day. I got to choose Emer's birth date, as some of you may know, because that's the nature of a scheduled caesarian section. I decided, when choosing it, that there were no benign dates...

But still, sometimes I wish there were.

Comments

[natural20.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a hard one. I think it's a pretty good answer for a six year old, tbh, and I say this as someone who has never had to explain it to someone so young. ±800 years of violence and hatred, on both sides, is a lot to take in, so yeah, well done. I'm am sorta assuming, of course, that this answer, like most answers to kids, will change over time, but I think starting to try and explain why, during her mum's lifetime, so many people died over that bit of Ireland, might be a bit much. I mean, I have no conception of how you'd explain Omagh to a child, I can barely understand it as an adult. But, rightly or wrongly, this is part of their history.

[ailbhe]

Oh, it will change. I'm not sure when. She will probably read my old Kevin and Sadie books, anyway.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

She might get more of the context from you, but she might also be a mostly-English kid who just doesn't get it at all. I read Joan Lingard, and was completely baffled by it. I could keep which was which straight in my head at all.

[ailbhe]

My problem with Kevin and Sadie was that I kept thinking the girl should be on My Side and the boy on That Side, so I kept getting their religions mixed up.

[taimatsu]

This did occur to me when I drew it (assuming you mean the one I think you do). Couldn't have drawn anything else, of course :/ Sorry.

[ailbhe]

That's ok! it would have been MUCH worse to leave the Border out of it.

[ailbhe]

huh, apparently I even have a pome about this... http://ailbhe.livejournal.com/535633.html

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that the historical period we know least about is the one just before our birth. How real, to us, was the arms crisis growing up? The Civil Rights movement? Vietnam? Martin Luther King? The oil crisis? Biafra? Watergate? They all immediately preceded our birth, and yet were a complete and uninteresting blank to me as a child, an unimaginable melodrama of bad suits and comedy accents if I ever thought about them, which I hardly ever did. Too recent to read about as history, too far off to remember. I bet Omagh will be like that for your girls, too, as they grow up - something from the olden days. Dull.

Then again, I also read this morning that few historical periods shape you like the one immediately preceding your birth. And that may also be true.

[ailbhe]

I suppose I'm just young enough that the US civil rights movement, Vietnam and MLK all featured quite a lot in my childhood - Vietnam was in at least two TV series on RTE, otherwise I'd never have heard of it, but it might be my aunt-the-nun-in-America who influenced our awareness of the black civil rights movement. That, or my mother having a bit of a thing for Sidney Poitier. I don't think I noticed the oil crisis until we did it in Junior Cert history.

I think I *hope* Omagh will be dull ancient history to my children. The notion that it might be current for them, too, is just plain depressing.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Huh. I had a class specifically about that in high school (I went to an unusual high school, though.)

And I remember being bombarded with TV specials about a bunch of babyboomer history, growing up.

[piqueen.livejournal.com]

You did better than my parents, who only ever managed "we don't talk about that in front of your grandparents". Perhaps because I only ever asked when over there.

[ailbhe]

That's one of the things I try not to do - I have so far answered the children's questions at least *somewhat* no matter who was there when they asked. I have sometimes postponed answers because I was too busy but I think I've always answered them later, as far as I can remember to.

It's most difficult, of course, for the most contentious subjects.

[flybabydizzy.livejournal.com]

I was born 10 years after the end of WWII. It was too far in the past to be current events, but too recent to be History, so I never learned anything about it apart from what I saw in the jingoistic, racist movies of the day. Thankfully, times have changed, and you are more aware of the whole picture than to let your girls pick up odds and ends of misinformation from the television.