Not the war. The courage. What children need to know about people who chose.
D-Day, June 6. How to talk about history without burdening children with its weight.
The ceremonies at Normandy happened this week. Heads of state, veterans — fewer each year, the youngest now in their nineties — and the question that always follows: how do you explain this to children? How do you talk about something that required so much courage because so much had gone catastrophically wrong, without either romanticising the violence or drowning the children in its weight?
I've thought about this as a paediatrician and as a parent. My answer, for what it's worth: you don't explain the war. You explain the choosing.
On June 6, 1944, thousands of men stepped out of boats into water and onto beaches toward things they couldn't see and couldn't control. They were not superhuman. They were frightened — the accounts make this clear. They did it anyway.
The choosing is the thing children can understand and use. Not the geopolitics, not the military history, not the full context of what preceded it — all of that can come later, in layers, as they're ready. But the choosing: someone was afraid, and they did the thing anyway. That is comprehensible at age five.
The thing I find most important to convey is that courage is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to act despite it. This is one of the most practical things children can learn, because their lives — school, friendships, first attempts at anything difficult — are full of moments that require exactly this.
Materials, steps, what to notice — the hands-on part that makes the edition usable at home with your children this week.
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