War and Peace

We listened to the Arlo Guthrie song, Alice's Restaurant, in the car the other day. Gone are the days where we can just "listen" to a song. Addie wants to know about what every song means and if we don't know, she says, "Can you guess?" !

So while this song itself is about 20 minutes long, the conversation that ensued lasted another 45 minutes. We found ourselves teaching her about littering, the dump, jail time, wars, peace activists, etc.  I hadn't thought that we would be talking about what War is with our 3 year old, but here we were doing exactly that. We kept glossing over weightier issues like weapons and killing, but she kept digging and was only satisfied with in-depth explanations. I think it was very difficult for her because she really wanted to know about this "new" topic, but she didn't at all like what she was hearing. It was very troubling for her that people would fight and kill one another. And she wanted to know why people couldn't just be peaceful.

A couple weeks went by and I assumed that she had forgotten about that conversation. But just the other night she started talking about Wars again and asked if she could maybe get the people to stop fighting. We began talking about how peace activists write letters to presidents and other people in charge of countries to let them know how they feel about important issues and we told her that she could write a letter to the President if she wanted to. "Oh yes,  I really do want to. I'm going to tell him to stop all the wars."

The next morning we were discussing what to do that day and I gave her a couple options. She said "But first I'm going to write my letter to the President!" Ok.

Here's what she dictated to me:

Dear President,
I'm the fairy of the whole world. I'm Addie B. and I'm 3 1/2. I want you to stop the wars.
Fairies don't think bad things should happen and they're worried and scared and they want to help and they don't really want weapons to kill people. Fairies really don't want bad things to happen. Please could you write back to me?
                                                                                     Love, Addie



She began writing the letter herself, but I think she got overwhelmed after the first couple words.

She didn't finish writing the letter and I again assumed that she had forgotten about the issue but just yesterday she came out of her bedroom after her nap wearing a big peace sign necklace. She said:

"Mommy, if the President doesn't listen to me and doesn't stop the wars, I'm just gonna wear this necklace and go to the countries where they are fighting and tell them to stop. Do you think they will listen to me?"  Oh, Addie, I want more than anything to say yes.

Photo credit: Amy Sidell