this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Trauma, unlike wealth, actually does trickle down. So even though kids don't understsnd where it's coming from, major traumatic events will affect them second-hand.
Being in the UK no one believed me when I was concerned at school after hearing about 9/11. My grandad was in there, and it took us a whole day to get a hold of him to find out if he got out in time... 9 year old me hearing on the radio coming back from swimming after a trip at school that the Twin Towers got hit, I remember turning thinking I misheard it to ask my teacher left to me in the coach "My grandad works in there".
Her eyes opened wide. I got collected early from school by my crying mother early. Then I understood and got worried. No one at my school helped calm me, thankfully I must have looked so clueless and confused anyway. I was an odd kid so no one probably cared or noticed.
Odd day. Don't really need to explain much else.
So in answer to the comments on here saying kids don't remember, of course they do! We didn't just start consciousness and wake up at age 10 or whatever.
You're definitely right, it can affect second-hand, even if the child didn't directly understand.
I wouldn't draw the conclusion that all kids remember it based on your experience. What you experienced was likely very traumatizing.
For anyone your age, even in the US, their main "trauma" was not being able to watch cartoons because the news was on every channel. Unless, of course, someone they were close to worked in or around the towers like in your case.
That happened during the school day for me. West coast would have been asleep. On the east coast, at least, no kid was nagging about cartoons unless they were out sick in a non-flu month and also particularly stupid.
Granted, I was 11 then, so definitely on the higher end of the 90's baby scale. But there are at least 630 child millenials that very clearly remember that, because our teachers were ordered not to say anything, told us they were ordered not to say anything, and then immediately disobeyed because they felt it was important. They led my entire grade out into the main hallway to watch it live.
I'd had too much of a sense of realism to ever think we were "innocent" or whatever, in order to understand what people mean when they say they lost that. I think this reaction would be more prominent in the middle class than my PTSD-riddled ass. I assume they just mean a lost feeling of safety?
Sitting cross-legged on the floor in the kind of silence several hundred tweens aren't supposed to make, my main emotion was a deep dread. Anyone with a brain in their head knew we were going to retaliate. I didn't want a war.
I also remember Y2K. It was hard to hear anything else. 1999 is the first new year's eve I clearly remember, actually, simply because it was anxiety-inducing in comparison with all the others. Just sat there with my headphones on, not listening to music. I was a stressed out kid.