How to Explain Complicated Concepts to Kids: Practical Tips for Parents and Caregivers
Flour dusted the edge of our kitchen counter last Saturday, and my 7-year-old Mia had chocolate chip dough caked on her elbows when the mail carrier knocked. The envelope he handed over was light blue, marked with the clinic sticker my sister Lila had been pointing out on her way to appointments all month. Mia grabbed it first, turning it over in her sticky hands, and asked the question I’d been dreading: “What’s IVF, anyway? Why do you have to go to the doctor so much to get a baby?”
I froze. I’d been over this in my head. I could pull up the WebMD article I’d skimmed, launch into explanations of hormones and egg retrieval and implantation, and watch her eyes glaze over like they did when I tried to explain why the sky is blue a few years back. Or I could brush it off as “grown-up business” and send her back to stirring, which would just make her press harder, like it does when you hide something interesting from a kid. I’ve done both, more times than I can count. Once I tried to explain Alzheimer’s to Mia when my grandma was diagnosed, and I unloaded so much information about brain cell damage that she ended up crying in the hallway, scared I’d forget her name by bedtime.
But before I could open my mouth, Lila set down her phone and leaned forward from the couch. She said, “You know how when we planted sunflower seeds in the backyard back in May? Some of the seeds we put in the ground didn’t sprout, even after we watered them every day and gave them lots of sun. That’s what happens with my baby seed. It just hasn’t sprouted on its own yet. The doctor is helping me put the seed in the right place so it can grow.”
Mia stared at her for a second, then nodded. “Oh,” she said. “Can I give you my biggest sunflower seed from this year to help? It’s in my treasure box.” Then she turned back to the bowl of dough, swiped another chunk of chocolate, and started stirring again. That was it. No tears, no ten follow-up questions, no confusion. Just an answer that fit exactly what she was asking for.
That moment got me thinking about how often we get this wrong. When I’m subbing in elementary classrooms or talking to other parents at pick-up, the question comes up all the time: how do you explain the hard, messy, complicated stuff? Death, climate change, divorce, poverty, why some kids have two moms or no home or a parent in jail? Most of us default to one of two bad options: we either dump all the adult complexity on a kid who can’t process it, or we hide it and pretend it doesn’t exist.
The first thing I’ve started doing that works is actually pretty simple: before I answer, I ask them what they already know. Last month, Mia asked me why my friend Sarah got divorced. I almost started talking about marriage counseling and fighting and all the adult stuff, but instead I said, “What have you heard about divorce already?” She said, “Is it when kids don’t get to see their daddy anymore?” That’s all she was actually worried about. I just said, “Nope. Sarah’s little boy gets to see his daddy every other weekend, and they go get ice cream every time. Sarah and her ex just don’t live in the same house anymore, because they weren’t happy living together.” That was the end of the conversation. She didn’t need to know anything else that day.
Second, use metaphors from their world, not jargon. You don’t need a medical degree or a political science degree to explain something to a kid. Climate change can be a too-thick blanket on a hamster cage, if that’s what they know. Alzheimer’s can be a notebook with missing pages. Poverty can be a board game where some people start with all the playing pieces and others start with none, and the rules aren’t fair. That’s enough for a 7 or 8 year old. They don’t need to hear about interest rates or greenhouse gas emissions until they ask for more details.
If you don’t know the answer, you can just say that too. I don’t make up stuff to fill the silence anymore. I just say, “That’s a really good question, I don’t know the answer right now. Let me look it up and we can talk about it later.” That’s way better than confusing them with a half-baked explanation you pulled out of thin air.
Third, stop when they stop asking. Kids process complicated things in layers, not all at once. When my grandma first got diagnosed, I only told Mia about the missing notebook pages. A month later, she came to me and asked, “Will your notebook pages fall out when you get old?” That’s when I answered that question, told her it doesn’t happen to everyone, and that even if it does, it’s a long time from now. If I’d tried to answer that question the first day, it would have scared her for no reason. If they want more, they’ll come back and ask you later. You don’t have to get every part of the explanation done in one five-minute conversation.
I still mess it up, of course. Last year, when Mia asked why two men can get married now, I launched into a whole thing about civil rights and changing laws and decades of fighting, and she just stared at me like I was speaking another language. My partner stepped in and said, “It used to be that only some people were allowed to get married, and now everyone who loves each other can, which is fair.” Mia nodded and went back to coloring. That was all she needed.
We finished our cookies that Saturday, brought three warm ones to Lila on the couch, and Mia ran off to get that sunflower seed from her treasure box. Lila tucked it into her wallet, and we didn’t talk about IVF again for the rest of the weekend. I know if Mia asks more questions later, we’ll answer them, one at a time, with whatever makes sense for where she is right now. Complicated concepts don’t need complicated explanations. Most of the time, a sunflower seed is more than enough.
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