How to Explain the Government to a Seven Year Old
It’s been a whirlwind of a month for me personally: we’ve moved about 20 miles north of our now old home, and all the while had family in twice to visit in that time (once mine, once my wife’s).
This serves two functions: one to excuse my lack of recent posts, and two as a setup for our topic today! My nephew who was visiting is seven years old, and is at the understandable stage of asking “why” to pretty much everything.
And so at some point you have to get to the topic of the government. And the fact of the matter is, explaining the government to a kid is tricky, and potentially impactful. Inspired by my own attempts over the weekend, I wanted to provide a playbook for any parents (or cheeky aunts/uncles) out there!
Last but not least: if there are any government employees out there reading this… know that I am talking about the system, not the individual(s). That delineation may go over a seven-year-old’s head, but you can obviously still have good people doing good things within a broken system. Large companies work the same way.
With that said though, let’s explain the government to a seven-year-old!
7yo: “What is the government?”
adult: “Well, it’s people who you have to listen to, whether you like it or not.”
7yo: “So, it’s like our parents?”
adult: “Well, kind of. But it’s more like if your parents were really bad at things.”
7yo: “How bad?”
adult: “Like, so bad that you saw them and wondered what they were even trying to do. It’d be like, if you asked your parents if you could have ice cream, okay. And then they said ‘sure!’ but instead of getting you ice cream they put your head in the toilet and flushed.”
7yo: “Why would they do that?”
adult: “Who knows! They may think that is what ice cream is, or maybe they just don’t know how to get you ice cream so they do something else they do know how to do instead.”
7yo: “That’s pretty funny! What else are they bad at doing?”
adult: “Well, spending money, for one thing. They’ve long ago spent all the money they have, so now they just go around stealing as much as they can and borrowing money from people that they’ll never pay back.”
7yo: “But do they at least do good stuff with that money?”
adult: “Well, they’ll say they do, but not really. Anything they do is done really bad because they don’t really know what they are doing, and it is easier and more fun for them to just take that money and give it to some of their friends who also don’t do anything.”
7yo: “That does sound bad. What else?”
adult: “Well, they’ll sometimes have to take care of bad guys, but they aren’t great at that either, so they’ll end up killing a bunch of normal people too. It’d be like if your parents saw a bad guy coming toward your house, but ended up shooting 10 other people while they were trying to shoot him.”
7yo: “Geez. Is that it?”
adult: “Oh god, no. I mean, I wish it was. They’ll play mind games with you. But whereas a good parent will do this to get you to do something good for you, like eat your vegetables, the government doesn’t really know what is good. So sometimes they’ll try to trick you into doing healthy things, but then they’ll also try to trick you into doing dangerous things like experimental drugs or getting into big fights with other people. I mean, they aren’t really good at tricking people, but a lot of people will still fall for it.”
7yo: “Why do they try to trick us?”
adult: “Well, again, they are like really bad parents. Like, the worst parents you can imagine. I can’t stress this enough. So they probably think it is funny. And especially when they get us to fight with each other, that keeps us all focused on fighting our brothers and sisters rather realizing how bad they are at their jobs and teaming up against them.”
7yo: “So why don’t we just vote new people in?”
adult: “Well, they’ve kind of made it a secret club, that, to become a member of the government you have to promise to be like the rest of them. So it’d be like if your parents came to you and said you could pick new parents, but they only gave you two choices, and each of those choices looked even worse than your current parents.”
7yo: “Shit.”
adult: “That’s a bad word, don’t say that!”
7yo: “But why not?”
adult: “Because unlike the government, I’m actually trying to make you a better person, and bad words make you sound trashy.”
7yo: “Fine. Are you done telling me about all the bad government stuff?”
adult: “For today at least. I’ll need some time to figure out a good analogy to explain how they started Covid and all the bad stuff they did from there.”
7yo: “They started Covid? Would that be like if my mom and dad just threw me into the cage with the lion at the zoo?”
adult: “Pretty much. And they were so bold about it that they even put the guy who paid the money to create the virus in charge of ‘keeping us safe’. So that’d be like if your parents then told the police ‘yeah, we threw him in with the lion, but don’t worry, we’ll get him out.’”
7yo: “I’m thirsty now!”
adult: “Me too, kid. Me too.”
The adult heads to the liquor cabinet and gives himself a healthy pour.