Explaining geopolitics to a seven year-old

**Lemur** · 10-14-2010, 17:19

Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

Maybe you could have said how a lot of the Afghans were being bullied by the Taliban, and so the US went in to help the ordinary Afghans out? And that Afghans aren't just a single group of people like we usually think of when we think of countries, but they have all sorts of conflicts between themselves like with the Pashtuns and other ethnic groups etc.

Oh, gosh, all of that is valid, but I try to be careful how much I try to cram into my little lemur's head at one go. I almost always preface this sort of conversation by saying, "It's complicated, but I can explain part of it." It's gotten to be something of a joke with my lemurling. "Dad, you know how you always say 'It's complicated?' "

I don't want him to get the impression that there are things he simply can't understand, 'cause I think that sends a bad message, but I try to limit the scope of each explanation. Like I said, at bathtime two nights ago I was just trying to give him a tangible understanding of insurgency. If I could just communicate that clearly I would feel full of win.

I only explained racism a few weeks ago, and I don't think he got it. The idea that someone would judge an entire group of people based on trivial physical appearances ... I think that went right over his head. Or under, rather. I don't know if I'm ready to try to explain tribalism just yet.

The worst one was when he asked me in the car if Christmas was Jesus' birthday. Ooooh, that stung. My inner thought process:

Do I say, see, there was a Roman festival of Sol Invictus, and then the Roman empire became Christian, but not right away ... no. Absolutely not. Do I just say "Yes"? What about my vow to never feed him bad info for any reason? Do I violate that for my own convenience? Maybe I boil it down a little, say something like, "It was a holy day for a long time and then the Christians decided to use it for Jesus to keep things simple." No, no good, then he'll be asking when Jesus' real birthday is, and I don't know, 'cause nobody knows. Grrrrr.

Finally I gave him, "That's the tradition."

"What's a 'tradition'?"

Grrrr.

**al Roumi** · 10-14-2010, 17:35

By the sound of it, you may find this relevant:

http://xkcd.com/803/

**Lemur** · 10-14-2010, 17:40

Yeah, I feel a twinge of guilt every time I say "It's complicated," but then I try to make up for it by explaining some aspect of what he's asking. And of course if I don't know I just tell him that I don't know. Those are the easy ones. "What kind of tree is that?"

"I don't know, puppy. You should ask your grandma. She's very smart about biology and trees and that sort of thing."

Yeah, the I dunno questions are a walk. It's the ones where I do know but there are just too many angles to explain quickly that knock me back.

Originally Posted by Vladimir

Christmas is easy: It's when we celebrate the birth of Jesus.

At that moment, while driving, I found the answer exceptionally hard.

Originally Posted by Vladimir

He needs to understand that there are things he doesn't understand, things he will never truly *know*, and that it's impossible to completely know or understand anything. The important thing is the quest for knowledge.

Well, I don't know if I entirely agree; you can certainly master aspects of some knowledge. Maybe you'll never jot down every digit in Pi, for example, but you can figure out enough of it to use it in an engineering problem. And so forth.

But it's all about the quest for knowledge? Absolutely. Damn straight.

**Sasaki Kojiro** · 10-14-2010, 17:44

If it ever stresses you out, you can reread some of those calvin and hobbes comments and live vicariously through calvin's dad..."that's because the world really was black and white back then".

**al Roumi** · 10-14-2010, 17:50

I think the "wrongness" in the XKCD example is not the "it's complicated" but the "we need to move on". It's slamming the door on inquisitiveness which needs to be avoided, and it sounds like you certainly don't do that!

I think it's important to understand things are complicated. If your Lemurling gets into science, he'll discover that not everything he is told is always true. I still remember my surprise when finding out that the "plum pudding" (or quasi solar system) atomic model (neutrons & protons in centre, sperical electrons wizing around) wasn't actually right -and I was 17 then...

**Samurai Waki** · 10-14-2010, 18:53

I don't know if the girls are even aware there's a world outside of Mom, dad, grandma, and grandpa... then again they're only four.

I don't think you could have explained it any better, it's a complicated issue and it's not easy to understand for many adults.

**Lemur** · 10-14-2010, 19:31

Originally Posted by Wakizashi

... then again they're only four.

Yeah, this is a kind of recent development. Trust me, I was not getting grilled about our military commitments when he was in preschool. He started wanting to know a lot more about the world in kindergarten and it's had an exponential growth curve since he hit first grade.

**Vladimir** · 10-14-2010, 19:42

Has he been peeking over your shoulder while you're posting here?

**gaelic cowboy** · 10-14-2010, 21:40

Originally Posted by alh_p

I still remember my surprise when finding out that the "plum pudding" (or quasi solar system) atomic model (neutrons & protons in centre, sperical electrons wizing around) wasn't actually right -and I was 17 then...

Me too my head near exploded when I found that 0=1 when using linear algebra in college

**Beskar** · 10-15-2010, 02:37

Originally Posted by alh_p

I still remember my surprise when finding out that the "plum pudding" (or quasi solar system) atomic model (neutrons & protons in centre, sperical electrons wizing around) wasn't actually right -and I was 17 then...

Well, it is still right. Just having them characterized in terms of the S, P, D and F orbits wasn't a major step in understanding.

Then again, I was never taught the 'plum pudding' model either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_pudding_model

I don't get why or how anyone was ever taught that one.

**al Roumi** · 10-15-2010, 11:01

Yeah, the diagram on that wiki page is a strange one. I was more used to this one:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

The idea of electrons not as spherical particles but clouds (and not neccessarily discrete lumps), as in the the following diagram was weird.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Lets not talk about light either... there's a reason I studied engineering (not physics) and then even left that as a discipline!

**a completely inoffensive name** · 10-15-2010, 19:55

The plum pudding model is wrong. The plum pudding model states that the elections are surrounded in a positively charged cloud no nucleus involved. That was proven false by the Geiger–Marsden experiment in 1909 where Ernest Rutherford and his team shot alpha particles at gold foil which gave results that could only be explained by an incredibly small positively charged nucleus center with negatively charged elections orbiting it with the majority of the space itself being completely empty. This new model is the Rutherford model which was better but not perfect. After that Niels Bohr improved upon the model a lot. The picture you posted alh_p is the Rutherford-Bohr model.

However that model as shown by the picture isn't 100% right either because elections do not orbit in circles like planets around the sun but have atomic orbitals/clouds. Since then there have been a lot of quantum mechanic progress on the model but that stuff is over my head, however one of the more straightforward quantum mechanic improvements is that the elections in their clouds cannot have its position and velocity determined simultaneously under the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

**Vladimir** · 10-14-2010, 17:40

Christmas is easy: It's when we celebrate the birth of Jesus. Like a federal holiday, which, for me, is one in the same.

He needs to understand that there are things he doesn't understand, things he will never truly *know*, and that it's impossible to completely know or understand anything. The important thing is the quest for knowledge.

**Rhyfelwyr** · 10-14-2010, 21:56

Originally Posted by Lemur

The worst one was when he asked me in the car if Christmas was Jesus' birthday. Ooooh, that stung. My inner thought process:

Just say what I would tell any future kids: Christmas is a pagan festival kept by the Romanists to cast us back into the bondage of the law. *we need the surprise smilie!*

I don't have any kids, but my brother has asked me questions on political issues ever since he was around 8, usually inspired by his playing of PC games, films, or some basic history he's been taught at school. The most recent example I can think of is when he asked something about the Nazi's (thar be a Godwin!), and for some reason when I explain things I have to go right back and try to take away all our modern assumptions etc, so I went on forever about the issue of class struggle and the idea of nationalism, through to the shorter-term factors like the depression, WWI reparations (don't get upset Louis!), and eventually got onto explaining how national socialism was a response to these issues.

I think he just about understood it as well.

Some things which might appear simpler proved harder though. Trying to explain that the term 'Jew' applies to both a religion and an ethnic group took a long time to get anywhere with (never mind explaining what an ethnic group was).