The Daily Populous Wednesday January 21st, 2026 night edition
Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by Unusual_Diver1973

No_Band_3085 on January 20th, 2026 at 22:28 UTC »

Just watched a video of a ten year old boy during a soccer match telling a kid on the opposite team that he would call ice and have him sent away. The poor kid was sobbing. This is the worst of times for sure.

ChOcOcOwCaKe on January 20th, 2026 at 23:45 UTC »

My kids had parent-teacher a few weeks ago and one of the hanging wall assignments a class did was to finish the sentence "my biggest fear is...". This was done by my daughter's class, so grade 2.

One of the assignments was done by a little girl down the block and hers was "my biggest fear is that when I go home I will be sad".

That was one of the most depressing things I have ever read

cwningen95 on January 21st, 2026 at 00:20 UTC »

If their family is panicking or directly impacted, or they're living somewhere like Minnesota, a seven year old is plenty smart enough to pick up on that. The comments saying this is bad parenting and the kid is too young can't seem to conceptualise that a lot of kids are finding out what's going on the hard way. Maybe this kid is one of them, maybe they did just find out from adults. Literal babies are impacted by heightened emotions around them, even if they're not able to understand what's wrong. When an older kid knows something is off and no one will tell them why, it's probably going to be more distressing.

I was five years old when 9/11 happened. Even though I live in the UK, I have a faint memory of the teacher rolling in the TV to show the news to us. My teachers were not "liberal lunatics" or whatever lol, they just thought it was important for us to be in the loop so we know why the adults seem panicked.

Honestly, you either have no respect for children's intelligence/intuition or you had a pretty privileged childhood yourself if you think kids are all blissfully ignorant of the bad in the world.

EDIT: Also, aren't some of you from the generations where kids were doing duck and cover drills in school? I can't imagine the fear of total nuclear annihilation is especially good for a child's psyche either, but it was unavoidable at the time. Hell, here's some kids in the 60s echoing adults' concerns about nuclear war and automation.