Why My Daughter Growing Up Scares the Shit Out of Me

My daughter is two-years-old. She is beautiful and happy. I am so blessed that I have such a happy baby. She smiles at everyone but screams for me. Timeout isn't my favorite but she's smart and beginning to understand it. She loves to brush her teeth. She's starting to talk a lot more. She's outgrowing clothes every month and goddamn is she tall. But that isn't what scares me. Watching her grow and learn is the greatest joy in my life. I love it. I don't care that I'm buying her new clothes every month or that I have pool noodles on every sharp corner in my house.

What scares me about her growing up in this world, is that it seems to be getting progressively more and more fucked up. How do I explain to my happy baby girl that someone walked into a concert for young girls and set off a bomb to try and kill as many of them as possible? How do I explain to my daughter that I support guns because I feel safer carrying a weapon on me? How do you as a parent, explain the bad people and bad things in this world? And more than that, how do you explain that there are some people that actually don't care about these tragedies?

There are always going to be bad things in this world. That cannot be changed. Even if (by some miracle) we establish world peace, there would still be bad things. I'm not naïve. I know this. But I don't remember a terrorist attack being so common that people almost don't even care. I was in first grade when 9/11 happened. It was serious. We were in mourning for what seemed like a year. We came together as a country, as a world. The day the world stopped turning. Now, a bombing is mourned for about a week. Everything is cleaned up. People on the internet fight about who is to blame for it and why it happened. They start full blown arguments about it like we're talking about a kid who took a toy from another kid. Why? Why is everyone not doing what they can to help those affected and just talking about it? Maybe, I was too young to remember, but I don't remember debating if it was as bad as other events or not. I don't remember there being backlash at those people who were there at the time and made it out alive.

I don't want my daughter growing up in a world that feels the need to argue about who is to blame when someone gets raped. Or the world that sees someone with a mental illness and has a debate about if it's an actual disease or not instead of finding ways to help them. An entire generation is slowly getting wiped out by a drug and we are sitting here having a discussion about whether or not their addiction is a choice. Why are we not talking about ways to help these people? I was raised to always help people in any way I can. A lot of people now tell me that that is a sign of weakness. Call me crazy, but in a world full of people who are looking out for number one, I think it shows great strength to look out for everyone around you. I pray every day that my daughter grows up in a world that recognizes that we can't survive alone and we have to look out for each other and help each other.

I hope one day when my daughter is older, she isn't afraid to go to a concert. I hope that when she and her friends go to a party, she doesn't have to make sure one of them comes with her to the bathroom. I hope that when bad things happen in the world, people ban together instead of tearing each other apart. I am so afraid of my daughter growing up and this world continuing to be awful to each other. But you can bet your ass I'm raising my daughter to look out for everyone around her and stand up for people, the way everyone should. I'm teaching her to reach out to those who need help and lend a hand and keep her judgments to herself. Judgement isn't what we need right now. We need help. I pray that the next generation doesn't ever see us debating how bad a terrorist attack is. People need people. I hope we can recognize that again.