This is the question that can send me running.  It typically follows a piece of information that seems unrelated to anything we were just talking about.

My daughter had just turned 4 when we had a new roof put on our house.  For a week prior to the work, she was a wreck.  She worried constantly about if it was going to rain or storm.  She wanted to know if airplanes would still fly over our house, we are in the flight path of an international airport.  So the night before the work started, as I’m putting her to bed, she asked the question.  I didn’t know what she was referring to so I asked a few more questions.

“Is our roof getting cracked open tomorrow?”

In her concrete thinking, she believed the whole top of our house was coming clean off!

“Is that true, Mama?”

Well that one wasn’t so hard to explain.  Rain wasn’t going to fall on her while she was sleeping and passengers in airplanes would not be able to see our potty.

As she has gotten older, I still hear it.  Often it is an easy explanation, sometimes though, I tell her I need some time to think about what she is asking, or even do a little research.  I try to be honest about what I know and what I don’t.  She expects me to be able to tell her the truth, even when it’s hard.  I want to do that for her.

There are parts of her story that are difficult, hurtful, but I want her to always know that Mom loves her and will give her the truth as much as I am able, and she can understand.  I remind her when the hard questions come that I don’t know everything, I can’t fix everything, somethings I don’t understand either, but I love her and we can get through the tough stuff together.