In the car, at random, my six year-old began talking to me about her last day of school, during which a teacher decided to veer course and discuss politics.
"Ernie is nice and will help people, but Donald Trump is mean and yells and wants to take everything away", says my six year-old. I wondered how many delegates a beloved Sesame Street icon could gather.
I could have called the school, ranting about injecting politics into a setting where the audience can't vote for at least a decade. But I'm sure the school staff was drinking copious amounts of alcohol in celebration from not having to see my kid for at least two months.
What's more important than who my children vote for is how they arrive at the decision of the "who". Are they picking someone because someone else told them or because they have independently researched the candidate and find their collective worldview in line with their beliefs?
That's the message I stressed to my child. Yes, Donald Trump yells and has crazy hair. Ernie is in fact Bernie and he does want to help people. Adults disagree, like children, ironically, about whether Donald or Ernie are right.
I can't expect the same six-year old who secretly takes scissors at school to her hair because she "got tired of her bangs in her face" to never question the reasoning behind her decision-making process handed down to her.
My kids aren't minions whom I inject political vitriol into.
