Watching and listening to the news in front of children isn’t something I gave much thought to over the years. That changed when my third child was born, with a sixteen-year gap between her and my next oldest.
One of the biggest differences this time around has been how much more intentionally I observe. With my older two, I was curious about their development. I watched for milestones, listened for first words, and celebrated the obvious moments. But with her, maybe because of my age, or maybe because life has slowed me down just enough, I find myself stepping back more. I notice the small things, the pauses, the way she processes something new. Often not in the exact moment, but in the patterns that form over time.
One of my habits has always been turning on the news when I get in the car. It’s automatic. Start the engine, turn the dial, get that quick snapshot of what’s happening in the world. Maybe it’s a bit of an addiction to the constant churn. Maybe it’s concern about how things affect my business, my community, my family. Either way, it’s part of my routine, and for a long time, I never questioned it.
Then I started noticing something. When the news comes on, my daughter goes quiet. Not the peaceful kind of quiet, but a kind of withdrawal. Her chatter stops, her questions pause. She’s listening, but not comfortably. At first, I brushed it off. Kids zone out, that’s normal. But it kept happening.
I came across research, including work from Pennsylvania State University, that suggests young children don’t have the framework to understand that what they’re hearing isn’t an immediate threat. They hear tone, urgency, words like “danger” or “crisis,” and without context, it can feel real and close. So I asked myself a simple question, is it actually okay to have the news playing with a three-year-old in the car?
Looking back, that quiet started to make more sense. She wasn’t just tuning out, she was processing.
That realization didn’t lead me to stop listening to the news altogether. It just made me more intentional about when and where I do it. Now, I still listen, just not with her in the car.
And in that space, something better has taken its place.
Music. Conversations. Questions that don’t have clear answers. Stories that go nowhere and somehow mean everything. It’s become a pocket of time that belongs entirely to the two of us, and what I didn’t expect was how much I would value that.
It’s easy to think of connection as something that happens in big moments, birthdays, milestones, major conversations. But more often, it’s built in these small, unremarkable windows of time, a short drive, a quiet morning, a few minutes where nothing else is competing for attention.
Parenting isn’t just about what we teach. It’s about what we allow to fill the space around our children, the background noise we normalize, the habits we carry without thinking.
The news still matters. Staying informed still matters. But I’ve realized that, for now, this time with her matters more.
And that’s a trade I’m willing to make every single day.
