Cultural AD/HD

Years ago, I used to take my oldest kid to Toronto’s Planetarium ALL the time. (Especially in summer—we didn’t have a/c so we’d sit there in the cool and the dark). We loved all the shows, sitting there and staring up at the stars. In one of the shows, they talked about the idea that the sun would eventually burn out. A couple months later, my boy is sick sick sick with fever and having bad dreams. He bolts upright in bed (I think he was 6 years old?) and starts screaming at the top of his lungs, “The sun! The sun!” He was shaking from head to toe, sobbing uncontrollably.

It ended up becoming one of “those” things where it was such an anxiety he had trouble going to sleep because it just built and built up each night. Eventually, I took him back to the Planetarium so that he could talk to the scientist running the show. After realising (much more quickly than I) that a six year old boy couldn’t possibly grasp what “billions of years” meant, and that he was not being reassured at all, the scientist eventually settled for “No, that’s not happening while you’re alive!!” 

And thus, we had peaceful nights.

(Man, I STILL miss the Planetarium…there really has been nothing to replace it. I loved sitting in the dark, lying back and looking up at the stars and watching the show…)