My 6 year old daughter is afraid her Muslim friend will be deported if Trump is elected President

Question

My 6 year old daughter has a best friend at school who is Muslim and from a Muslim family. She is aware of the Presidential race, presumably from news. To my surprise, she has tearfully told me that she is afraid that if Donald Trump is elected President of the United States, her Muslim friend will be forced to leave the country.

I'm shocked that this is a concern that a 6 year old girl is having, and I'm not sure how to respond.

Best I can tell, she got this idea from a misunderstanding of when Trump called for a travel ban on all Muslims to the US. Along with Trump's other anti-Muslim sentiments, it seems that this eventually morphed into a fear that her Muslim friend will be forced to leave the country if he becomes President.

As far as I can tell, she doesn't have a lot of understanding of what Trump's platform is, just a fear that Trump is targeting her best friend and others like her. Hearing that Trump currently has a lot of support for President (as the Republican frontrunner as of the New Hampshire primary) probably reinforced her fears that he might actually be elected.

Correcting her by saying that Trump actually called for a travel ban, not deportation, isn't going to allay the underlying fears (and I believe that her Muslim friend has family relatives outside the US, which would apply to). I tried to explain to her that Trump can't make such a unilateral move on his own but she doesn't seem convinced, what with the media and Trump himself acting like he can. It doesn't help that at her age, she doesn't have a good grasp on how many parts there are to the government.

We've stopped watching the nightly news to limit her exposure to Trump's campaign, but I know she is still talking about it with her friends at school. It's causing her a lot of stress and I'm not sure what to do. How can I allay my daughter's fears?

_{I'm posting this on behalf of a family friend, who is not familiar with Stack Exchange, but I used the term "my daughter" for simplicity.}

Answer 1

Children often have more awareness of the world than we give them credit for and it's important for us, as adults, to remember that the world can look very different from a child's perspective. Things that would seem illogical and wholly unrealistic to us, might seem inevitable to them. So you should try to spend some time to figure out exactly what she is frightened of and what it means.

By way of an example my daughter suddenly started acting out, last summer, out of the blue, in ways that were very uncharacteristic of her. When we finally got to the bottom of it it turned she was convinced she was going to jail.

A month or so previously she had witnessed someone getting arrested while she was out with her preschool and her teacher had explained this was because he had made "bad choices". Now my daughter is very aware she is small and still learning about things and therefore also sometimes made bad choices and isn't always totally in control of herself when this happened. Therefore, to her this meant that going to jail was a certainty and there was nothing she could do.

It took quite a bit to persuade her, and we had to try different approaches to finally convince her they don't send preschoolers to jail. Part of that process was not just understanding how she felt but also taking it with the same seriousness as she did.

It might be that when you daughter hears deportation she thinks it will happen straight away and if the president says so it will happen.

As adults we are aware there would be many things that would happen, even in the case of a travel ban -- legal challenges, diplomatic reactions, popular protest, lobbying from companies that rely on people traveling back and forth etc.

A challenge will be to explain this without adding to her fears. In your situation I think I would take of explaining that because bad things like this might happen there are things in place that can help stop it, even if the President wants to do it .Just like as parents we have a lot of control over their lives there are things in place to stop us doing bad things to them even if we wanted to.

Your friend has my sympathy. My daughter is four and this is a little beyond her though she certainly knows who the president is and has initiated several conversations to try and get a grasp on what he, and the government does. Its still a worry for me, though, as we are a dual national family (I'm am immigrant to the US from the UK), so I hate to think of what she might start thinking if she started picking up on it.

Answer 2

I will try to make some suggestions which you may or may not find suitable:

1. Talk to her about it. She obviously understands something about politics, explain her more about it, be ready to answer her questions.

2. (If you are not a supporter of Trump, which we can't know) tell her that you personally do not wish him to become a president, promise her that you'll take her to the voting room (if legal/doable where you are) and that you'll vote against him. Explain her that this is what elections are about and this is how we speak our opinion.

3. Show your support of their friendship.

4. On the other hand, don't let your emotions to get involved in this too much, it would be very difficult to handle her fear if you feared the same thing.

Answer 3

1. Compliment her. This is a great achievement for a 6 year old and you should be proud. Let her know.
2. Find out her source of knowledge. It's probably a good source, but you want to make sure that what you are telling her and what else she hears is consistent and not confusing and scary.
3. Tell her the truth in concepts that she is familiar with. "Even adults sometimes say things just to get attention but that they don't really mean." "Donald Trump has said very strange things to get people to pay attention to him; I don't think most of these will happen, even if he is elected president."
4. If you are friendly with the family you can ask them how they feel about this and how they communicate to their own children. The same approach may work for your daughter as well so she and her friend hear the same things.
5. You probably have your own opinions about Trump, so make sure that whatever you are saying is consistent with what you think.

Answer 4

I think the best way to reduce her fear is to explain that what she fears cannot happen. You could read this excert from The Bill Of Rights together...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Explain that her friend is free to be a Muslim in America, and there is nothing that Trump, or anyone else can do to prevent her.

America is a great nation, founded on principals of freedom, tolerance, and diversity. It has survived bad presidents in the past, and can do so again.

It would be interesting to learn where her fear has come from. If she is frightened about this, then her friend is probably more so, which may mean her friends parents aren't aware of the limitations of presidential power in America.

The president is not free to implement whatever draconian laws he may want to. However there are certainly countries where a head of state does have this kind of power.

The best way for your daughter to overcome her fear might be to help her friend overcome hers.

Answer 5

To alleviate her fears, you can first explain to her that what people want and what they get is not the same. She knows that from her own experience. You can give her examples of things that you want and that you don't get. What Mr. Trump wants and what Mr. Trump gets are not the same thing.

You can explain to her that there are laws in place that will protect her friends. And that that these laws keep anyone, including the president of the USA, from just doing whatever he wants.

And last, you can tell her that as she gets older, she will be able to tell people what she thinks about matters, and eventually she will be old enough so that people listen to her. And then she needs to tell people how nasty it is to want to deport people who haven't done anything wrong.