September 8, 2002

For a year now, Americans have had the luxury of reacting to last September's events primarily with emotions, everything from fright to resolve to bravado. Remarkably, though, we've been compelled to do little else. We are living out a freak of history: a subsequent military struggle that, except for the loss of several lives in small battles, has asked next to no sacrifice of most Americans. Measured against the all-consuming impacts on the home front of earlier conflicts, this nation is fighting War Lite.

And yet it wasn't quite a year ago that many of us swore we would not allow our lives to go unchanged. We would strip away distractions and focus on "what really matters."

Where, though, should that quest take us?

Most of us are not members of Congress or of the president's Cabinet. We don't decide national debates.

Still, as a group we have even greater opportunities to influence the future of this nation. We can do so through our everyday interactions with the tens of millions of children who, soon enough, will live that American future. The issue is whether we seize this rich, regrettable chance to help the young generation still sorting through Sept. 11--in short, to raise and to educate kids who will be stronger and smarter for the horrific moments they observed.

The risk here is serving up mawkish imperatives that presume to tell adults how to raise a generation. It's tempting to play safe, to mark the passage of a year with traditional editorial page fare--what the United States next should do to quell terrorism, or whether this political candidate or that can help get the job done.

And yet it is too comfortably detached to view America's emergence from its year of mourning as fodder only for policy debates or electoral politics. None of that matters as much as doing what we can for those who will inherit this land--and who will protect, or surrender, that legacy.

Last autumn more than a few parents wondered whether, in more carefree times, they had focused too narrowly on building careers or getting the bills paid--and whether, as a result, their children were being raised by the Discovery Channel or PlayStation 2. In the past year, Americans have had extraordinary opportunities to include children, at whatever level the kids can manage, in national debates of historic proportion--about defending this country from harm, about ensuring personal freedoms, about hatred and fear, determination and dissent.

And yet how many of us have to admit that, rather than drawing children into these discussions of what America is and should be--in other words, rather than helping them learn what it is to be an adult--our kids still mostly hear us fussing over who will chauffeur them through their busy activity schedules, or needling them to do their homework, or otherwise reinforcing the narcissistic notion that life revolves almost exclusively around precious them?

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The challenge is for adults to dial back our role as coordinators of childhood events and again become . . . adults. To openly discuss our world--and not just what's next on the calendar that hangs from the refrigerator door--with the children in our lives. To teach them essential character: how to lead good lives and be good citizens.

No advocate for young people has been sounding this call louder than Alvin Rosenfeld, a New York psychiatrist whose book on out-of-whack family priorities, "The Over-Scheduled Child," was a bible for many parents, teachers and other adults who interact with kids before Sept. 11.

This is a job quite apart from last year's task of helping children cope with the mass murder of more than 3,000 Americans. Rosenfeld's agenda focuses on the longer haul: arming children with the skills and spines they need to withstand cataclysmic events and still lead enjoyable, generous lives. That wouldn't be difficult if children paid close attention to what parents and other adults tell them: We could sit them down for earnest lectures and then congratulate ourselves for suffusing them with megadoses of character.

Most kids, of course, listen barely if at all to what adults say. Instead they watch what adults do. And, for better or worse, there may be no lesson we impart to them so efficiently as how we adults react to events that upset us, from a fender-bender to a threatening new era of conflict.

What many kids too rarely witness is adults thinking through what we believe--about citizenship, about war, about how not to let concerns over far-off events snuff out ordinary kindness and joy. One practical lesson adults can teach by their actions, Rosenfeld says, is that what protects and stabilizes us in times of danger is being close to people we care about, talking through with them what scares us and how we can react.

That notion of confronting how a terrible struggle affects us, rather than glossing it over, is more than a platitude. Example: During World War II, the U.S. military often tried to keep emotionally distraught servicemen with their combat units and give them medical attention at the front, rather than removing them from their supportive friends for treatment elsewhere. The upshot was less incidence of shell shock, the debilitation that during World War I plagued many soldiers who, at the first sign they were overwhelmed, had been removed from their buddies for treatment behind the lines. A companion lesson from World War II: British children who stayed with their parents during the German bombing of London, and who learned from them how to cope with imminent danger, emerged healthier psychologically than did kids who had been shipped out of the city for their safety.

Exploring perils, and teaching kids how to react to them, doesn't have to be overly complex. The point isn't to sit children down and solemnly inform them that, "Tonight we'll be discussing how each of us feels about Sept. 11." A talk might instead start with an adult saying, "I'm a little uneasy about Sept. 11 coming around again. How about you?" After gentle prodding, most kids will talk--and listen. As Rosenfeld puts it: "We have an opportunity here to teach kids how to be adults--how to manage fear and risk without being overwhelmed or forgetting that life is about treating others as we want to be treated. They'll need that balance all their lives."

Those lessons can begin early, and simply, through the intimacy of the ordinary day. Elizabeth Berger, a Philadelphia-area child psychiatrist whose book "Raising Children with Character" also predated Sept. 11, echoes the message that parents transmit their own strength of character when they routinely display such building blocks of adulthood as respect for others, self-discipline, and the ability to accept victory or defeat without coming unglued. "Remember that after the terrorist attacks, survivors were on TV saying to the rest of us, `Go hug your kids and tell them you love them,'" she says. "You notice they weren't saying, `Go hand your kids a list of demands and make them improve their behavior.'

"Trying to `make' your child grow up to be honest, responsible and generous will make him wish he were somewhere else. But making it clear that he brings meaning and joy into your life will cause him, over time, to develop into an honest, responsible and generous person. That was the unspoken insight of those survivors."

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Some children have a head start at absorbing these traits. They've seen adults donate money, food or clothing to help people who suffered losses, either because of Sept. 11 or economic recession. They've noted who does, or doesn't, respond to requests to donate blood for others in need. And, once made welcome, they've stopped obsessing on the child-centered activity of the moment to witness adults wrestling with issues that have erupted over the past year. They have joined debates about warfare that takes the lives of combatants and innocents alike, about constraints on liberties in times of conflict, about fighting a murderous foe without blaming others who share his religion or his looks.

The sum of what these kids are learning approximates Berger's definition of character: striking a fair, ethical balance between protecting one's own interests and having a concern for others. That is not a balance we as Americans have always struck perfectly in our dealings with the world--a reason why we ought to help today's children learn to do the job better.

Rosenfeld is drawing attention nationwide for promoting a practical tool to help one generation impart these lessons to the next. It's called Family Night, an experiment he helped launch last year in Ridgewood, N.J. For one night that suburb had no school events, no homework, no civic meetings, no other distracting activities. Instead, families spent time together as they wished--playing board games, going for walks, or just talking about what matters to themselves and their country. Yes, it sounds awkward, but for many families the night helped build fresh ties. Rosenfeld now is pushing the idea to community leaders and parent groups nationwide via a new Web site, nationalfamilynight.org.

Or we can just continue to do what many of us have done: bloviate about how we really must prepare children for a more menacing world--and then return to our grown-up concerns while leaving kids to their school and youth activities. We can let our busyness tug us apart at a time when we ought to move forward together.

But that would be an opportunity squandered. Like the adults in their lives, the generation of children who witnessed Sept. 11 suffered a blunt emotional assault. Depending on what they learn now, they will grow to relish--or to avoid--the burdens and triumphs of citizenship.

We adults can treat the quiet qualms and noisy debates provoked by Sept. 11 as the province of grown-ups. Or we can draw children into our discussions about self-defense, freedom and responsibility--and show them by our day-to-day actions how to lead responsible, principled lives.