My Four-Year-Old Wants to Be a Police Officer: A Morning Drive That Changed Everything

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“Mommy, I want to protect everyone in the whole city by becoming a police officer.”

My husband was on speakerphone for a business call when my son said this. We both went quiet. It wasn’t the first time he’d brought it up, but something about that morning made me realize we couldn’t keep redirecting the conversation.

How do you explain institutional violence to a four-year-old?

How do you tell a child who sees himself as a future protector that the very institution he admires might one day see him as a threat?

When Daddy Left Town

The day before, my husband was heading out for a business trip. He knelt down to our eldest son—four years old—and said those familiar words: “You’re the man of the house now. You need to take care of your siblings and your mother.”

My son thought about it for a second. Then he said: “No, I can’t do that. I’m still little and I need Mommy to take care of me.”

Good for him, I thought. He wasn’t buying into that particular script.

But the next morning, as we drove to school, my daughter announced: “I’ll take care of Mommy while Daddy’s gone!”

It’s funny how early these patterns show up. My daughter is already sensing that caretaking is her territory. And before anyone jumps on me—no, this isn’t about dismissing all traditional values.

It’s about noticing what our children pick up without us explicitly teaching them.

The Conversation That Stopped Me Cold

That’s when my son made his announcement about protecting everyone by becoming a police officer. For weeks, he’d been talking about police cars and badges, about catching “bad guys.” My husband and I had done what parents do—changed the subject, suggested other careers, distracted him with other topics. But that morning, I decided to engage.

“There are many ways to protect people,” I said. “You don’t need to be a police officer to do that.”

He disagreed. With four-year-old certainty, he explained his reasoning. Police have cars with sirens. They have badges. They stop bad people. He’d seen it on TV, in books, in all the simplified narratives we feed children about how the world works.

“I know that’s what you see on TV,” I said, “but the reality of what police do is more complicated.”

He was listening now, really listening.

“Yes, they help certain people,” I continued, checking his face in the rearview mirror. “But certain people they hurt.

And sometimes that hurt can be more devastating than the help they provide, depending on what communities you live in.”

Four years old. He’s four years old, and I’m having this conversation.

But when I think about the world he’s growing up in, I know I can’t wait.

Teaching History at Pre-School Drop-Off

“Why do they hurt people, Mommy?”

There it was. The question I knew was coming.

“Do you want to know where the police came from? Like, how they started?”

He nodded, his sister listening too.

“A long time ago,” I began, “when there was slavery in this country, there were groups of people whose job was to catch enslaved people who ran away seeking freedom. These were called slave patrols. They would hunt people who were trying to be free.”

His eyes got wide. We’d talked about slavery before, in simple terms. But this was different. This was connecting the past to the present.

“The police we have today grew from those groups,” I said. “And any institution—any big organization—that starts from that kind of violence is going to be inherently violent unless people work really hard to change it. And that work hasn’t happened.”

“But what about the good police?” he asked.

“There might be good people who become police,” I said. “But the system itself, the way it was built and the way it works, that’s what we’re talking about.”

He sat with that for a moment. Then: “What about riding in an ambulance?”

The shift was so sudden, so perfectly childlike. “What about firefighters?” my daughter added. “Can we be firefighters?”

I actually laughed. Here we were, having just discussed slave patrols and institutional violence, and they’d moved on to firefighters. This is childhood—holding both the weight of history and the lightness of possibility in the same conversation.

Why This Matters Now More Than Ever

Some of you might be wondering why I’d have this conversation with a four-year-old. Here’s why: the alternative is what I grew up with. Sanitized stories about American democracy, about “liberty and justice for all,” that never matched what I saw and experienced.

Those false narratives aren’t just wrong—they’re actively harmful.

They’re what allow a president to deploy military against American cities. They’re what enables the Supreme Court to sign off on the harassment and arrest of American citizens for immigration infractions, reasoning that it’s “not that big of an inconvenience” since they’ll be released once authorities verify their citizenship.

Think about that. The highest court in our land just said it’s acceptable to arrest Americans and sort out their citizenship later. This goes against everything American democracy claims to be about—the idea that freedom has inherent value, that it can’t be taken away without legitimate cause.

When the Supreme Court sanctions this, they’re showing us exactly whose side they’re on. This isn’t a glitch. This is the system working as designed, rooted in those origins we don’t like to discuss.

I’m not going to raise my children on the myths that made this possible. The stories that paint over violence with pretty words about freedom. The lessons that teach compliance over conscience.

This Is About More Than The Police

This conversation in my car wasn’t really about the police. It was about the entire challenge of raising aware children in a country that often rewards ignorance. It was about recognizing that parenting is political, whether we acknowledge it or not.

We can’t just worry about organic milk and screen time anymore. We have to think about raising children who can see clearly in a world designed to obscure truth.

Every part of what we do, every story we tell, every difficult conversation we have or avoid—it all happens in this current moment. We can’t pretend otherwise.

An Invitation, Not an Answer

I don’t have perfect answers. That morning in the car, trying to explain slave patrols while navigating traffic, I was very aware of my own uncertainty.

❇️ How do you preserve some innocence while telling necessary truths?

❇️ How do you instill hope while acknowledging harm?

❇️ How do you raise children to be both safe and free?

What I can offer is this: honest questions, real conversation, and the knowledge that you’re not alone in struggling with these impossible calculations.

I think about my son pivoting to EMTs, finding another way to help. I think about my daughter’s declaration that she would take care of me, and how that same fierce care might one day change things. I think about all of us parents, driving our children to school, fielding questions we never expected.

We’re all just doing our best, trying to raise children who understand reality but aren’t crushed by it. Children who know the truth about where we’ve been but can still imagine better. Children who have the tools to build something different.

My son wants to protect everyone in the whole city. That impulse—to protect, to serve, to care for community—is beautiful. Our job is to help him find ways to honor that impulse without joining systems that might harm him or others. Our job is to tell him the truth in ways that expand rather than limit what he thinks is possible.

And maybe, if we do this work honestly, our children will grow up to create the institutions we’ve been waiting for—ones that actually protect and serve everyone, built on foundations of justice rather than control.

That conversation on the morning drive to school? It’s far from over.

This is exactly why we’re launching Roots and Wings—a space for these conversations.

Yes, we’ll cover the everyday parenting stuff, but we’ll also tackle these bigger questions.

Because raising children today means grappling with both. It means giving them roots in truth and wings to imagine better.

Join us. Because none of us should be having these hard conversations alone.

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What difficult truths have you navigated with your children? Share your stories in the comments below.