Children, blood and bullets: A true story

A series of eight ink sketches depicts a shooting.

The images are child-like but there is no mistaking the story line - a man with a gun fires shots through a door, hitting a woman sitting on a toilet seat. There are four bullet holes in the door.

Another picture is the child's depiction of a hollow-point bullet. Yet another shows blood spatters.

There is some embellishing: in the child's version, Oscar and Reeva are smiling, and Reeva is imagined to have got to hospital and put on life-support before flat-lining.

But the artist is only seven so we can forgive her those liberties.

I should have expected this. The Oscar Trial was all over everywhere: 24-hour pop-up channels, wall-to-wall news coverage on radio and in newspapers, heated debates around the Saturday afternoon braai. I thought we had protected her and her sister from the graphic details of the case. They were not allowed to watch the Oscar channel and dinner table conversation was steered away from the court case. We were protecting them... or so we thought

Nothing really prepares you for picking up images depicting that violent scene drawn by your sweet-natured little girl.

At first I freaked. What does this mean? Is it the first sign of a depraved personality? Should I seek professional help, put her in therapy, put myself in therapy? Turn off all news bulletins and stop subscriptions to newspapers?

Then I looked at her smiling up at me as I studied the pictures.

This was not the work of a child with some form of hidden violent psychosis.

Like adults, children feel the need to talk through their fears and concerns. They look to us to give them stability in an often unstable world.

And this is what this was - the work of a child trying to understand the world around her and, in the absence of verbal tools, using art to do so.

Psychologist Deborah Bernhardt argues that we cannot hide the violence that plagues our society from our children; they are being exposed to it directly or indirectly.

Instead, she says, we should have age-appropriate conversations with our children to help them understand the world around them.

I agree.

Once I got over my initial shock, those sketches opened the door for me to speak to my daughter about what she was hearing: to tell her that bad things happen to good people, to talk about robberies and home invasions, and what to do if one is caught up in a crime, to talk about domestic violence and the objectification of women. Not easy conversations but necessary.

And the conversation continues, often sparked by a picture, something she heard on the playground or something she saw.

I can only hope this conversation continues as she grows older.