By Steve Adubato, PhD

I'm writing this essay on Wednesday, September 12, at about 9 a.m., 24 hours after the unspeakable events that changed our lives forever. When the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center I instinctively went to my son's school in Glen Ridge to take him out. Stephen is 9 and in the fourth grade. As his mom and I approached the school, we could see other parents arriving to do the same thing. When I met his principal, on the job for less than a week, I asked her how the school planned to talk to the kids about what had happened. Her response stunned me. "We don't plan on telling the kids. When things like this happen, that's what we do. Try to keep it low key."

I responded, "with all due respect, nothing like this has ever happened before." Then my son's principal asked me why I was taking him out of school so early? I hesitated and then said that there is no perfect response right now. All I know is that we want him with us so we can talk to him and explain what had happened. Just as my son arrived in the office, his mom (my ex-wife) asked me "what are we going to tell him?" I was frozen. In my desire to be with him I hadn't thought about how to communicate what had actually happened, but he was standing right in front of me. This scared little nine-year-old looks at me and his mom and asks, "Did someone die? Is anyone sick? Why are both of you here?" We told him we would talk to him once we got outside and then asked him to wait until we got into the car. But he insisted and he was on the verge of tears. "Tell me now. Tell me what is going on."

His mom told him there had been an "accident" and two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I attempted to clarify that message by telling him it wasn't an accident and that certain people had planned to do this. That changed everything. After telling him he could ask us anything, we weren't prepared when he actually did. The questions started coming nonstop. Neither of us, particularly someone who has spent his professional life in the world of communications, had answers that seemed to help. Once we got him home, we reluctantly agreed to allow him to watch television. This made the questions and comments from him even more difficult; "Dad, If I ask you a question, I want you to tell me the truth, even if you don't want to. Do you promise?" "I'll try."

Then he asked, "Are they coming here to New Jersey? Am I in danger? Did one of the planes come from Newark? You said they couldn't come to NJ." Then, as he heard talk of Middle Eastern terrorists possibly being responsible, he said, "I know why they did this, because we are friends with Israel." Later in the day, Stephen asked, "why does the TV put 'America Under Attack?' if they aren't coming to NJ? Are we really all under attack? Dad, I know it is a stupid question, but are all the people on the planes dead? Even the people that did this? We bombed Afghanistan, didn't we? Will they come back tonight and bomb us? I think they will."

After taking him to church and then to the Salvation Army in town to see how we could help, I tried to remind him that lots of innocent people including children had suffered and were still suffering. Some of his schoolmates' parents worked at the Trade Center. When the extent and horror of this tragedy becomes more clear, my son along with thousands of other children will continue to ask difficult and in some cases unanswerable questions. As adults and parents and more experienced and knowledgeable communicators, we are supposed to help them. But how honest can and should we really be? Is it okay to tell them how vulnerable and scared we feel? Aren't they looking to us to be reassured? But I'm not sure how much we can actually reassure them. How do we know this isn't going to happen again? I must admit in these first 24 hours to feeling terribly inadequate. What about you? How are you communicating with your children about all this? Write to me. We can all help each other. We must help each other.