The Mosque Attacks; helping teenagers understand what’s real.

My friend was at work on Friday when the horrific news trickled in and, like so many other New Zealanders, she was desperate for five o’clock to arrive, to hurry home to hug and hold her teenagers, to acknowledge the darkness. But when she opened her front door it was to the sound of gunfire as her son sat in his room playing Fortnite. She heard him calling out for a pump gun.

Her urgent need to gather him in and reassure him and her own fear and anguish at what was unfolding was replaced by disappointment – that seemed to turn so quickly into rage at that stupid, futile game and rage that on this day of all days, he was still spraying bullets.

She yelled out for him to ‘turn that thing off’ and she turned the TV on. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘this is real. This is now.’

There’s nothing surer to get a teenager offside than to yell at him and because of this, he watched the Christchurch events unfold belligerently.

There were many adults who didn’t realise immediately that NZ had changed forever on 15 March, so it’s understandable that our young people may not always join the dots straight away either. But the outpouring of emotion, love, horror, support and unity must by now have infiltrated the minds of any decent person. My friend’s 16-year-old boy is more than decent. He’s intelligent and empathetic, yet he didn’t get the connection between what was unfolding in Christchurch and what was on his screen that afternoon. He was merely chilling-out after school.

It’s a reminder to us that teenagers don’t always think as we’d like them to. When the Twin Towers came down in the 9/11 attacks, I was out of town and my then 14- and 16-year-old sons were staying with my parents. These boys, now grown men, have clear memories of that time and their thought processes. They believed World War III was inevitable. They were certain their futures were now predestined and they would be called up to fight. One of them remembers wondering if he’d get to run in the upcoming cross-country event and feeling some relief that he was, at least, in training.

I think teenagers need to talk at this time and then talk some more. If you can include them in discussions with neighbours, friends, around a dinner table, or encourage them to talk with their peers, you are helping them find their way in this new alien environment. Teenagers need as wide a range of opinions and reactions as possible from which to take their cues.

It would be a good idea to encourage your teenagers to listen to our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and hear her rage. Perhaps they mightn’t have noticed that our TV channels are putting up violent content warnings and selecting their programmes more carefully (for now). Have they heard people speak about the undercurrent of racial abuse that’s running through our society? Maybe they could consider how it might feel to be the only girl in school wearing a headscarf, and in my friend’s case, her son might need to understand why the noise of his violent game and the language he used when talking about weapons was not ok at that time. He has a right to know what made his mother so angry and it’s good that she can explain, without apology.