What to tell your kids about 9/11

History has a way of eclipsing details. We remember the big picture events, but our minds empty the tiny particles of memory as if to make room for newer stories.

So, when your children ask what happened on Sept. 11, 2001 – 20 years ago today – don’t forget the little pieces of that hugely horrific day.

Tell them that at 8:45 on a cloudless, clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, N.Y.

Explain that the impact of that plane hitting the building left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of a 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors. It literally stopped people in their tracks. Nobody expected it.

Show them the video of that day. It exists because as the brave men and women who carried out the evacuation of the tower and its twin was underway, television cameras captured live images of fires burning and human beings —some running away from the disaster and emergency personnel running towards it. There was so much courage that day — and so much destruction.

Describe how 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767 – United Airlines Flight 175 – appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the same site and sliced into the tower near the 60th floor.

With wonderment, tell them that an American astronaut was aboard the U.S. international space station on Sept. 11 and saw something strange happening below. Expedition 3 Commander Frank Culbertson was flying over the New York City area and recorded his thoughts of the world changing beneath him. “It’s horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point. The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are.”

Explain to your children that at the Department of Defense, located in a large building called the Pentagon, brave people were also working that day, and as millions watched the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington, D.C., before crashing into the west side of the Pentagon at 9:45 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno and 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon, along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.

And then, as if the story could not get worse, describe what happened next, that less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke.

Finally, with sadness and disbelief, explain that a fourth California-bound plane was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and that because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone. Talk about the heroism of the passengers and flight attendants, who realized that the plane was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed and tried to regain control of the plane, causing it to crash to the ground in a field in Pennsylvania.

Telling the story of 9/11 takes time. It was a long and exhausting day. Your children will ask about the bad guys — Who did this to us and why?

And then you will have to try to explain the concept of evil. It is hard to say that sometimes people have terrible ideas that make them keen on destruction and death. It is hard to understand why human beings would rather die than live and how fear can inspire hatred and hatred leads to more hatred. 

But children must know that brave Americans working at the White House make hard decisions and that when it was clear, almost immediately, who the hijackers were – al-Qaeda terrorists – and where they came from, our brave troops responded by planning an invasion of the country hosting terrorists, Afghanistan and that we prevented another successful attack in the United States until 2019.

Remind your children that America did not stand idly by after the events of 9/11 — that we sent some of our finest Americans to right the wrongs of that terrible day by going to a faraway place called Afghanistan to punish the evil ones and show the good ones how to lead peaceful and productive lives. We did our best to make sure the bad guys could not hurt us that way again.

We will learn more about what happened on 9/11 with the release of newly declassified documents related to the terrorist event. But the most important lesson remains: Tell your children that America is still strong and free and that we do good things even in bad places.

Tara D. Sonenshine is a former U.S. under-secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs.