Parenting in the Age of Trump

Political culture encompasses the prevailing moral values, beliefs, and myths people live by and are willing to die for. It also includes the collective memory of a society—the history we learn about in grade school; what we come to know about our leaders, about crises we have survived as a nation, and about wars we have fought” (Magstadt, 2018). Our textbook explained in this quote, the cultural importance of understanding and knowing our politics and how it should be introduced early in an individual’s life. It always bothered me that my knowledge on politics was always very minimal and I had to o goggle Brazils president in 1995. Politics was never really discussed in my household and I wonder if this part of the reason for my lack of knowledge about this subject. I also don’t remember it being discussed in school so much. Another question is how can you engage a 10 year old in a politics conversation, how to explain the importance of knowing about our president, especially with our current president? I found that there is a book to help in this case, called How Do I Explain This to My Kids? Parenting in the Age of Trump written by a psychologist Dr. Ava Siegler. In an interview with the author, Karin Kamp asked a few questions to understand the psychologist book and idea. One of the questions that caught my attention was, what should parents do with the entire negative and mean information they read and see online. Dr. Ava answered, “Decency, civility, knowledge and truthfulness are not values in this administration. I believe that we are in the midst of a national disaster and parents are our first responders. To counter what’s happening, you need to redouble your efforts to criticize what you see and hear in the Trump administration and reinforce the values that you want your child to have. For example, you can say to your kid, “No matter what Trump does, we don’t call people nasty names in our family” (Kamp, 2017). I would definitely read this book and get an insight on how to talk to my kids about trump if I had kids.