Sometimes when you take the children somewhere full of meaning and poignancy, they don’t always appreciate the solemnity of the occasion…
All parents dread that familiar knot of tension in our stomachs whenever the children start playing up somewhere they shouldn’t: weddings, theatres, museums… war memorials. Children giggle too loudly, or run too fast, or don’t listen to the guide, or jump in a bomb crater, or clamber on a statue. (Sorry Canada).
We take our children to a lot of battle sites (see: Dragging the kids to historic monuments). It’s important that they understand the price of peace and that terrible things don’t always happen in far off places to other people.
Here at the American cemetery in Normandy, there are, quite rightly, signs indicating good behaviour is required as there are many people there who want to contemplate and to remember their loved ones. So I did see parents reprimanding their young children darting full pelt down a line of head stones.
Then again, a little part of me feels that the sound of kids goofing about is exactly what these brave young men gave their lives for…