How do you explain events that even adults can’t understand to a child?

Seeing my ten-year-old daughter, Freya, a week after the massacre in Paris, I asked her if she had heard anything about the events there. She said, in a matter-of-fact kind of way, that she had heard something, but didn’t say what it was or from whom she had heard it. All she would say was that it hadn’t been mentioned by her teachers at school. And then she changed the subject. I didn’t feel like saying any more on the matter. Either she didn’t know anything much or she didn’t want to talk about it. And what would have been the point of discussing something so horrible with her? We turned on the television and watched an old Bing Crosby movie instead.

But one of the hot topics of recent days has been what to tell children about this Isis atrocity. It’s a question that has obviously worried Parisians more than anyone else, for most children in Paris can hardly have been unaware that something pretty dreadful had been going on.