I have an extremely inquisitive, bright and hard-to-fob-off 8yo with ears like a bat and eyes everywhere. I usually try to answer all his many many many questions as truthfully as I can in an age-appropriate manner but I'm struggling with Epstein.
I have explained the basics along the lines of 'very rich and famous man did bad things, was put in prison, died, has now turned out that lots of other rich and famous people may have also have been involved or at the very least known he was up to said bad things', but was stumped when asked for details of his crimes. I have now distracted or derailed from this question four times, and the last time he asked we got as far as 'keeping people prisoner on an island who didn't want to be there'. Which obviously prompted 'but why?' which I mercifully ran out of time to have to come up with an answer to.
However, on the way to school this morning it became clear that he has decided that Epstein was obviously running a cannabis factory (he is unfortunately vaguely aware of cannabis farms using victims of modern slavery as workers, thanks to DH's job and aforementioned ears like a bat 🤦🏻♀️). He was mostly expounding on this theory so I got away with making non-committal listening noises, but I know we'll end up coming back to it because once he gets fixated on something like this it takes him weeks to move on.
Directly telling him he's too young or something isn't appropriate for him to know tends to prolong the fixation. And saying 'I don't know/ am not sure' also no longer works as he then either asks me to look it up, or if I 'can't' goes on to ask Daddy/ Granny/ his teacher/ his football coach/ his friend across the road's parents until someone is sufficiently caught off guard to give him an answer he thinks is acceptable.
I'm not sure where to go from here as despite his nosiness and generally coming across as a mini adult in conversation, he is still little, fairly sensitive and quite easily scared. He came down the other evening while his older brother and I were watching Murder on the Orient Express and got so upset by the background kidnapping plot (that he understood in about five minutes of half-listening to tricky-to-follow dialogue) that he slept with the lights on that night and has now set up a tripwire across his bedroom door (which nearly killed me when I went to tuck him in last night). I think if he understood much more than he does now about it all he would really struggle.
How do other parents handle things like this?