Rania Awaad – Age-Appropriate Conversations- Navigating Difficult Topics with Children

			And another thing that I wanted to share
		

			about him is he spoke, when we talk
		

			about children, to their level.
		

			And I think that's really important today.
		

			And part of the conversation we're going to
		

			have a little bit with our therapist as
		

			well is, you know, he was very keen
		

			on making sure that the person in front
		

			of him understood what he was saying and
		

			that they were not overburdened unnecessarily.
		

			And this becomes really important about kind of
		

			age-appropriate milestones.
		

			Here at the Rahma Foundation, those of you
		

			have girls in our halakas here, you'll know
		

			that one of the things that we really
		

			like pride ourselves on, inshallah to Allah, I
		

			hope it's accurate and true, is that, and
		

			we've been doing this for years, is that
		

			the content that we teach in the different
		

			groups that you have your girls in, right,
		

			the frogs and bunnies and the rainbows and
		

			the busy bees and the rosebuds, right, that
		

			they're age-appropriate content.
		

			That we're not talking to frogs and bunnies
		

			about very difficult things to understand.
		

			In fact, we're trying to break it down
		

			to their toddler level, right, the four and
		

			five and six-year-olds.
		

			And when we get all the way to
		

			your busy bees, your middle schoolers, now we
		

			start to get into kind of like some
		

			conversation indefinitely by the high school, right, we're
		

			starting to get into heavy, heavy conversations.
		

			But it's age-appropriate because what we find
		

			is that there are, just like there are
		

			physical milestones, right, whenever there is a really
		

			horrific tragedy that's unfolding, in this case it's
		

			still unfolding in front of us, it's very
		

			likely that at some point the young people
		

			around you are going to ask about this
		

			if they haven't already.
		

			And when they do, there's a decision to
		

			be made about what to say and when
		

			and to who.
		

			But it starts with us and how much
		

			we engage with our children and what's happening
		

			with us in real time.