My parenting has changed

I am a mother of two primary school boys and since October 7, while I live in Australia and have an Australian passport, I am no longer an Australian parent. My experiences seem so remote from those of non-Jewish parents.
My parenting has changed. Since ‘Israel’ became a slur word, and our Jewish school increased its security and the frequency of its emergency drills, my main parenting strategy became evasion – hissing at my husband when he mentions the news, avoiding Melbourne’s CBD which is now the hub of anti-Israel protesters, terminating phone calls on the car’s speaker from friends describing antisemitic incidents, distracting the boys away from the sight of hateful graffiti. As if by doing all this, I’d make all this disappear. In all these ways, my daily routine of school pickups and playground or shopping ventures has become a minefield.
Not infrequently, my impulse to protect my children clashes fiercely with just the same impulse – to protect. Like when my boys decide to practice Hebrew, which they study at school, in a busy shopping centre. Do I ask them to be quiet, to avoid a potential antisemitic attack? Or do I let them talk, so that they remain ignorant of the fact that their identity puts them at risk?
These days, many Australian Jewish parents I know tell their children to take off their school uniforms with Hebrew lettering when in public or instruct them not to tell strangers they are Jewish. Perhaps I should do the same. But I cannot. At least not yet. I cannot bring myself to pass my dread to my boys, even for their own safety. Their happy Hebrew chatter goes on. But what if someone abuses them simply for being supposedly Israeli, or Jewish? Nowadays, this is no longer a far-fetched possibility.
I do know it’s my job to prepare my children for living in the real world, as it is. I read the parent manual. But against its rules, I use distraction and bribery. In shopping centres I offer my boys, in English, the things I usually refuse – lollies, overpriced Pokémon cards, arcade games – anything to take their minds away from Hebrew.
To be a Jewish parent post October 7 is to be faced daily with impossible choices, the kind of choices where nothing is ever right. It is to be extra-extra-vigilant. And also extra, stickily, tender. Whenever the photo of Kfir, the toddler held captive by Hamas, pops up on my socials, I rush to my children and hold them for as long as they let me.
I know I cannot keep up this charade, this evasion, forever, but right now, the only thing that redeems anything is my boys’ blissful ignorance. Their tiny sorrows over a lost chess match or a botched drawing make me ridiculously happy. This is what it feels like for me to be a Jewish parent in today’s Australia.