Truth is scarier than fiction

I've just come back down from comforting little a, too scared to fall asleep. That's not unusual. She has a low fear threshold, my daughter. What is unusual is that tonight her fears were completely founded in reality. Usually, we spend a hearty five minutes bopping imaginary monsters, dragons and storybook burglars on the nose. I can promise her that bad earthquakes don't happen in this country, and it's really unlikely that we'll get hit by lightning. But tonight, when she told me she'd overheard the bigger girls talking about 'scary things' I didn't have the answers. She's starting to be that age where she understands, but doesn't quite. And part of me wants to protect her from every bad thing in the world, from even knowing that there are bad things. But a much bigger part wants her to grow up tough. I want her to be Pippi Longstocking: strong and free and kind (and if at all possible, with a large bag of gold coins ...)

So doesn't she need to know about the bad things then? So that she can learn to stand up to them? But how do I tell her and still let her sleep at night? How do I explain the riots when I don't really understand them or know what I think myself? I found myself telling her we'd be safe because we didn't have trainers, or a shop that sold flatscreen TVs. That we were on the top of a hill and lived on a quiet street. But I knew how tenuous my arguments were, because I've just spent three days watching reports of the weirdest and most arbitrary, unpredictable and, yes, scary, things that people do.

I think a lot about the stories we tell our children. I wonder why we value stories so much. I wonder why, in the attempts to understand the riots, so many seem to feel that if only we could teach every child to read, they would be okay. Is that really true? or is it that reading to your child is an act of love, because it takes time and togetherness, and what all children need most of all is to be loved?

Obviously, I like to tell myself that in reading her stories, I'm not telling her lies about the world, but showing her truths. But part of me thinks I'm just weaving that web of cotton wool even thicker. I'm wrapping us both in the cocoon of a world with cats named Mog and tigers who come to tea, where the goodies and baddies are as easy to tell apart as fairies and witches. And of course it's all middle middle class and a world away from the real baddies who aren't so much bad as bored or jealous or angry.

I do want her to learn the difference. Just maybe not yet.