Talking to My Son About Donald Trump

My son is eight years old, and he hates Donald Trump. I know this because he literally said those exact words to me: “I hate Donald Trump.”

I can already imagine people pointing their fingers my way. As my mother-in-law says, “That doesn’t sound like something he licked off the back fence.” And yes, I’ll confess to having my own (often vocal) opinions about politics both here and abroad. But I’d like to think I haven’t said anything that gives my children the idea that it’s okay to hate someone just because you don’t like what they say or do.  

What my son was calling “hate” was actually coming from a place of fear.

I got a better sense of where the hate talk might be coming from when I heard my son at the bus stop talking with a friend. He said he hates Trump because he’s going to use his job as president to start a war. And then it hit me: what my son was calling “hate” was actually coming from a place of fear.

I don’t think it’s wrong for him to have an awareness of global politics, and I don’t want to discourage him from having opinions about how we sort out this messy business of governing ourselves. In fact, I’m proud that he’s curious about how the world works.

Recommended Reading: 6 Responses When Your Child Says "I Hate You"

The problem is that I can’t tell if they’re his opinions or if he’s parroting what he’s heard somewhere else. And when it comes to American politics (and Trump in particular), these days “somewhere else” feels an awful lot like “everywhere else.” I don’t want him to feel overwhelmed by fears that are formed from what other people tell him; or, worse, grow up feeling like fear justifies mean actions against other people. 

(For example, his newfound political awareness gets dicey when he starts with, “I hate Trump,” and then decides he doesn’t like all Americans because they let him be their leader. You try explaining the intricacies of a foreign electoral system that you yourself aren’t even exactly sure about to to an eight-year-old.) 

So I tried something that worked the last time his safe part of the world got a dose of reality. Last fall, after much pleading on his part, he was allowed to bring his own basketball to school. He promised it wouldn’t get lost, and he kept that promise; instead, it was stolen right from his cubbyhole when his class was outside. 

It’s a hard thing, explaining to your child that someone he knows is willing to steal from him. But we asked him to try and see it from the other child’s perspective. Maybe the child who took it is mad because he doesn’t have his own ball. Maybe he’s sad that someone else took his ball. Maybe he had one but liked yours better because someone taught him that he should be ashamed of what he had. It’s not fair to hate someone for what they did without trying to understand why they did it, right?

I don’t want him to feel overwhelmed by fears that are formed from what other people tell him; or, worse, grow up feeling like fear justifies mean actions against other people.

I tried that with Trump, and it seems to work. He doesn’t say he hates Trump or that he's worried about how he might start a war anymore. Now he says it’s too bad Trump didn’t get more love when he was a kid.

“Does he think he can make everyone love him by being the president?” he asked me.

"I don’t know," I said. "I really don’t know. It looks that way. And if he’s acting up because he didn’t learn the difference between good attention and bad attention, then the best thing we can do is not reward him with more attention than he deserves."

He thought about that. “Well, okay, but he’s still a dummy for saying mean things.”

It’s a start.

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