They are doing just fine. I mean, it's not as if we've stopped feeding them 3 meals a day or moved them up to the attic so we can can take in borders. I've seen Kit Kittridge: An American Girl Movie, but I promise we're not making our kids sell eggs to help pay the bills.
But I realize that this is a tremendous change in our lives and a crisis like this can be very stressful. So far, my husband and I are keeping the stress to ourselves and not sharing it with the kids.
I know the experts would tell me that I can't hide stress from my kids; that they are more perceptive than I'd like to admit. And while my (unbelievably brilliant and very perceptive) kids might not be able to grasp issues surrounding the current economic meltdown (most adults I know can't either), surely they are receiving messages from the media and at school and quite possibly from their killjoy mother that things are bad. Luckily for me (and my kids) I fancy myself an expert on practically everything and so I am not afraid of what the other "experts" are saying because I always know best. My kids are fine.
Proof: The other day I got an e-mail from a friend whose son is in my son's class. She reported that her son came home from school and told her that Beck's dad lost his job, but he got an iPhone out of the deal. See that? As Bing Crosby used to sing, you've got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Who needs a job when you've got an iPhone, folks? My kids were never remotely interested in what their father did for a living, but now that he's got that iPhone he's king of the castle.
Another friend reports that her son asked if the Reids were going to have to live on the streets. She assured him that the Reids would not be homeless. (I hope she went a little further and added, "If worst comes to worst, honey, the Reids will move in with us and Mrs. Reid will take over your bedroom.") But she didn't mention that for sure. Hmm.
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