Sarah Mackenzie: 'We need to understand what lies beneath children's thoughts and questions'

It’s not unusual for the conversation and curriculum within our settings to reflect what’s going on beyond our walls. Whether it’s the change of seasons, a date in the diary or something within current affairs, some things are so significant, they announce themselves into the lives of our children.

We’d be hard pushed to think of something that has thrust itself into the national conscience in the way that the passing of the Queen did.

Every news outlet, a steady stream of coverage, images of the Queen outside shops, in public places. Whether it felt significant to us individually or not, the message has been clear to our children – something significant has happened.

A 24-hour queue that snaked through London, a mourning period, a state funeral of momentous scale, a King when almost all of us have only ever known a Queen, the arrest of a man holding a ‘not my king’ poster, heckling of a hearse, debate on the juxtaposition of the cost of the funeral against the cost-of-living crisis, monarchists, republicans, open discussions about institutional fault lines. Pomp, pageantry, pride. How much of this are our children aware of, and what are they left feeling now?

I’ve often thought that when we think about children’s fascinations, we fixate on the thing that seems to have captured their interest, not the act or the significance behind it. We focus on the noun, not the verb. We say a child is interested in dinosaurs and miss that their true fascination is with imagining themselves in a different world.

I think we repeat this reflex when it comes to an event like the passing of the Queen. We focus on the objects, the people, crowns and flags, when really this is a story of something deeper. For many children, this will be about understanding – processing – death.

For a child I spoke to the other day, their interest lay in wealth, why some people have money and some people don’t. My son’s first words to me about the Queen were about how much better kings are than queens. His comments might have made for quips to my friends and colleagues about toxic masculinity, but it gives me something to unpick, to explore his understanding of gender, to ask myself how many books and films he has experienced that centre a king.

We have a responsibility to see beyond the surface and support and guide with our children’s feelings, thoughts, and questions about what lies underneath. One thing I’m sure of is that I haven’t had any thoughts about flags, or colours, and I don’t think our children have either.