My 6 year old is very curious and full of questions. At 4, we went to a living museum and they happened to have a 1940s reenactment day which triggered lots of questions over the next few months about WW2, and we answered in the context of it being when Granny was a little girl. This weekend he initiated a lengthy conversation about "Titler" and how and why the two World Wars happened, so we ended up with a simplified explanation of countries wanting more land to get richer, groups of countries being friends, countries wanting old lands back, countries declaring war to protect their friends, countries being left poor, leaders promising to make countries great again, but being mean and unfair to people they didn't like, countries invading other countries, more war breaking out, and war ending when armies run out of supplies. Phrased appropriately, young children can process a lot and wrapping them up against the world keeps them ignorant. By his age, his grandma had experienced nothing but war since she was 18m old.
Back to the original theme of terror attacks, we went to London a month before the Westminster attack, so the memory of that location was fresh in DS's mind. We watched the news that night (it was at the loop stage so predictable in content) and he's aware that there's a small amount of bad people that don't like our way of life, so they want to hurt and kill people to scare us into changing. But we're not going to be scared, because the chances of being affected by these people are so very, very small.
With the timing of the Manchester attack, I hadn't fully caught up before taking him to school, so he found out in assembly. The school can't pick out who knows and who lives in a fluffy wuffy bubble. It was a topic likely to be talked about in older years and by siblings, and I trust the school to be appropriate and factual about it.
With this weekend's attack, I mentioned that Newsround was going to be sad tonight because there'd been another attack and that it was on the road that we'd stayed in an eaten at when we were in London.
Growing up, the IRA was targeting places familiar to me around London. I remember disasters like the Kings Cross fire on the 6 o'clock news, again a familiar place.
DS is particularly curious and other children will need less detail, but they still need access to truth. One day the future will be in our children's hands. Better that they reach adulthood and voting age with a good awareness of the world, warts and all, built up gently and appropriately as they grow. Schools also have responsibilities towards citizenship and the anti-extremism which includes the white right wing angle which may get stirred up by these kinds of events.