The most coveted item on the breakfast table in our house is the newspaper. While this may reflect poorly on the quality of our breakfasts, I think it actually says more about my family?s appetite for current events?and when I say family, I?m including my kids.
My boys, 9 and 7, are voracious readers. Their ongoing fascination with the news often derails our mornings?there?s no way they?ll brush their teeth until they understand why indigenous children were put in residential schools to be starved and abused. Who is to blame, have they been punished and how could this ever happen" I can?t count the number of times I?ve heard the school bell ringing a couple of blocks away while my mother (whom we live with) and I plunge deeper into explanations of human rights, colonialism and democracy. We?re not foisting this stuff on them but rather responding to an insistent battery of questions. Some might think it?s wrong to expose kids in this way, but I can?t imagine why. My older son gravitates to stories about technology, sports and celebrities. He is also interested in how things work and shares his younger brother?s interest in plane crashes, train derailments and natural disasters. His younger brother is fascinated by the dark side and hones in on images of horror: bombed-out Syrian cities, Russian protestors being bludgeoned by security forces, the devastation wrought by terrorist attacks. He collects stats on political figures like trading cards and tries to rank Vladimi...