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.