He is seven years old, in 2nd grade. I don't know when is the appropriate time to tell kids about it. I think of myself in 2nd grade and I don't think I knew about Pearl Harbor then, but I remember seeing the Challenger explode on TV and the most memorable part of it was that was the first time I saw my father cry.

My wife is away on business and luckily I chose today as a day I would take our one year old up in her stroller to walk our son home from school. We had no discussions about when to tell him about it and I had no idea it would be discussed in class today but I had my guess it might. I assumed, and I think correctly, that having a teacher discuss it with all of his classmates together might have been the best way to broach the subject.

We were having small talk about his day and then he said something to the effect of "today was the day bad guys flew airplanes in two buildings one time." Typing that brings tears to my eyes. Up until this time his greatest fears were thunderstorms, and while I knew at some time he would learn about it and all the other horrors and triumphs of our world, its hard watching another piece of naive innocence leave his world.

I asked some follow up questions to gauge how much his teacher told him and then asked him if he had any questions. He said his teacher said that your parents may not want to talk to you about it (which I thought was BS, you opened the can of worms teacher, any parent that tries to sweep something like that under the rug is chickenshit). I gave him the facts, dumbed it down a bit and explained how bad guys sometimes do bad things but good guys triumph and OBL is no more. I told him he is safe, some people made some mistakes that day that allowed it to happen, but we learned and it hasn't happened again.

We went to Pearl Harbor and toured the Missouri this summer. I gave him a G rated rendition of what occurred when we were there. I related 9/11 to that and how our country responded and fought the bad guys and we are safe.

How/when did you tell your kids?

My oldest daughter was born a few months after 9-11 and I began working as a Gov employee a few years after. We told our kids from day one what happened. Showed the videos, photos, etc. One thing I do not do with my kids is sugar coat the truth or bend it in any way. I let the facts speak for themselves. Anytime they have a question they know they can come to me if its about 9-11 or not and I will tell them they truth and not some left wing crap they were told in school.

Woke up this a.m. and saw the post on SIGforum. Tears started welling up as I remembered where I was when it happened, and my son (almost 7) walked in the kitchen and saw me in tears... I made a snap judgement and showed him the image posted and discussed it with him before class, because I wanted him to hear about from us, not the school version, whatever that might be.
Damned if he didn’t come home today with a drawing he made from memory that was pretty darn close to the pics I showed him this morning.

I am so proud of you guys. I don’t have children if my own, and my stepkids were of legal age when their mom and I met.

The fact that you tell them the truth and show them the reality of what happened, makes me wish so many more parents were like you.

Bravo for being amazing parents and raising your children to know the truth. I can’t imagine how hard it has to be to tell your young ones that there are real life monsters in the world.

I also had a discussion about 9/11 with my nine year old son.

My wife showed him some video last night, and I showed him some this evening, and we had a discussion about what happened, and some of the events that came right after (no planes in the air, extra security measures taking place, a sense of helplessness).

I listened to Cleveland's AM talk radio 1100 9-11 show today while driving my son to/from a doctors appointment. They were playing a lot of audio, phone calls, and TV audio from that day. He's seven and was quietly soaking it in like a sponge. Once arriving at my office he asked if that was happening now. I explained that it happened 18 years ago today. Also that we listen to remember and never forget. That satisfied his curiosity for now. Though I'm interested to know if my wife caught any questions after picking him up.

I was hesitant to let him listen. But I'm glad I did. I don't think he go much out of it. Except for an understanding of why Daddy is a little sad today.

I watched some of the 9/11 shows on NatGeo and history channel with my 11 year old. The old news footage from that day still makes me both furious and sad. Wife and I discuss politics openly and often (we’re both on the same page thankfully) and my son is quite aware of who is and who isn’t friends of America.

It's rather scary to think that kids who were born around that day have never really experienced the impact from it, and now they're old enough to vote.

It's important that they learn about things like this.

Wish I had seen this post last night, but we were at Cub Scouts (I am the den leader). I have a different meeting tonight, but I will have a few minutes to talk with my 7 & 8 YO boys when they get off the bus (I work from home).

I will ask them if they talked about it yesterday, and try to find some news to show them. Thanks for the reminder.