How to explain a Trump presidency to your children: UAE experts weigh in

It’s hard enough for many adults in the UAE to comprehend the US election results, let alone children.

But such a momentous occasion deserves to be explained to the younger generation, says the American Abu Dhabi-based women’s wellness specialist and former parenting coach Jody Ballard.

“You need to be as honest with kids as you can and at the same time, pass down your values and ethics,” she says.

Ballard advises using metaphors when trying to explain the divisive political contest to kids. “Children take in only as much information as they can understand, so use something a kid can relate to,” she says.

American mum of four Karen Kennedy, who lives in Abu Dhabi, used the analogy of colours on her 7 and 5 year-old sons.

“As much as you like ‘yellow’, you can’t force other people to have yellow as their favourite colour,” she told them. “People have different priorities and ideas about the best ways to solve problems ahead of them. My kids know I’m sad, but I’ve tried to remind them that they’ll have lots of friends and relatives who don’t agree with them - at a certain point you have to agree to disagree.”

Kennedy also told her 11 year-old daughter Ailsa that she thought Trump had run for the wrong reasons. “I’ve heard he feels if he is president he can ‘get back’ at some people, and I told her that holding grudges over many years is not healthy.”

The election result has been a particularly hard blow for some Arab American families.

Abu Dhabi-based mum Sana Bagersh never shielded her two youngest kids, 11-year-old Ahmed and 13-year-old Sara, from the realities of the bitterly fought campaign.

“My kids are knowledgeable about the Trump phenomenon and they’re just as shocked about the election results as me,” she says. “They’re been very interested and asking a lot of questions. Sara was explaining the difference between popular and electoral votes to her class at school.”

On election morning, Sara accompanied her parents to an election-watch hosted by the US Embassy and AmCham. “I figured it was a rare educational opportunity for her to learn about the political process,” says Bagersh. “After this week, she’ll probably be a politician.”

But Bagersh’s two eldest sons, Ayman, 25 and Karam, 21, weren’t so politically enthused, and she felt upset they didn’t bother to vote.

“It was apathy and lack of interest. But after they saw the results, they realised the importance.”

Not all Arab American parents were filled with doom and gloom about Trump.

Mohamed Farid, a business lecturer from Damascus who lives in Dubai, is in the process of applying to the US for residency. He’s been chatting with his 16-year-old daughter Nashwa about the election.

“I told her that Trump prefers qualified immigrants who want to contribute to American society, and this might work in our favour,” he says. “As a businessman, Trump is a better image of a leader. We were very optimistic when Obama was first elected – he was from an immigrant background, and I thought he might solve the Syrian problem. But Obama didn’t help Syria.”

The US election proved to be a divisive issue for many families. Texan Maggie Jackson’s political viewpoint is poles apart from that of her mum, a staunch Trump supporter.

“Over the summer I had to say to my mum ‘I don’t want you talking about this with my kids, because Trump’s racist and misogynistic values are not values I want my children to think are acceptable’,” says Jackson. “We’re trying to raise them to be tolerant.”

But parents shouldn’t shy away from having in-depth political discussions with each other around the kids, according to Ballard - as long as things don’t get too heated. “You want to show your child that each person can have their opinions, but it is respected. Young kids don’t have the intellect to understand, but they have the intuition to know something is wrong. It’s better that they know what that is, so they don’t think that they did something wrong.”

Nine year-old Marcus Brown, from the UK, discovered that the US election was a hot topic in the school playground this week. “He was been told by other kids that the US was going to bomb the UAE, and that Hillary Clinton had been put in jail,” says mum Sasha Brown, who lives in Dubai. So she down and calmly explained the facts, adding: “Bad guys sometimes win. But we should never stop being the good guys.”

Julie Gibson’s six-year-old son Orin told his mum he’s angry with Trump. “Trump owns a golf course right near where we’re from in Scotland, and he’s not been very respectful of the locals there,” says Gibson, who lives in Abu Dhabi. “We’re very politically verbal in our house, and I think Orin feels let down by Trump. He doesn’t understand when people talk badly of other people, like when Trump talks badly about Hispanic people. Once, Trump’s helicopter flew over our house in Scotland and Orin said ‘lets decorate our rootop with a Mexican flag and shoot at the helicopter!’ Which I didn’t encourage.”

Unsurprisingly, reaction to the US election has been a hot topic on the UAE’s social media. When asked by a colleague how to explain the US election result to her daughter, NYUAD’s executive artistic director Bill Bragin posted his response on Instagram: “‘Look at our community here in Abu Dhabi. It’s the most diverse, international place I’ve ever been. People from all over the globe living together, learning together, making art together. We ARE the counter-argument. Other visions are possible. And many of us actually live in those visions on a daily basis. Hold on to that. And then do the work to show that our vision is the stronger one’.”

Sallyann Della Casa, the Canadian founder of the Dubai-based Growing Leaders Foundation, recommends parents to give a rather rose-tinted version of the US election: “Trump dreamed a dream the entire world said he could not or should not be dreaming. He then had the courage to stand up in front of the world and shared his dream, as everyone laughed and criticised him. He then took steps to make his dream a reality. He won.”

newsdesk@thenational.ae