Here is PDiddy answering some hard questions on Ellen last week. I love that woman, I do. Diddy? Not so much.

“Mum, why would Rihanna get back together with Chris Brown after he bashed her up?” Anyone know the answer to that question? ANYONE? My friend whose 13-year-old daughter asked it was certainly stumped. The tragic cycle of domestic abuse is hard to distil into a few sentences. And yet it may be one of the most important conversations my friend ever has with her daughter.

Whether you’re a parent or not, there are some tough questions being asked by people of all ages at the moment. Questions like “Why would a woman stay with a man who abuses her?” and “Why do some footballers think it’s OK to sexually assault women?” and “Why didn’t God stop the bushfires?” and “If the Prime Minister can say ‘shit’, why can’t I?”

We’ve all been discussing these things lately at dinner tables and BBQs, in pubs and playgrounds. Because they’re all complex issues, there are no simple answers. However, this isn’t good enough if you’re a parent because your kids demand specific answers to all their questions. And if they’re girls? They’ll start asking questions early and they’ll keep asking them until your ears explode and you fall to the ground begging for silence.

No one tells you this in the hospital when you give birth. Sure, you receive all sorts of pamphlets and advice about breastfeeding and immunisation and how to wrestle back control of your pelvic floor muscles. All very useful stuff.  But nobody mentions the fact that your baby will soon morph into a small inquisitive person who expects you to know everything (at least until they hit their mid-teens when they will start accusing you of knowing nothing).

And even if you’re the kind of irritating person who already thinks you do, in fact, know everything? Guess what? You don’t. And your kids will call your bluff and suddenly you’re the guy telling his son The Great Wall of China was built to keep the rabbits out. I have been that guy so many times.

Lamentably, there’s rarely preparation time before being forced to explain things you don’t really understand. Like global warming. Or carbon emissions trading. Or the GFC.

My new trick, when the subject is a fact-based one, is to exclaim, “What a great question! Let’s Google it together so you can find out the answer!” I always aim for a nuanced tone that suggests I already know the answer but am keeping it to myself in the interests of fostering positive research skills.

If only questions about the economy and the environment were the curliest ones our kids asked. At least most of those do have answers; answers that can be found online or in a book. It’s the questions about human behaviour which are far more slippery. Sometimes, when my kids ask me one of those, I can almost hear a drum roll in my head, signifying how important it is that I say the ‘right’ thing; how crucial this information will be in establishing their future belief system and values. That’s enough to give anyone stage fright. Hence the rabbits.

These past few weeks have thrown up a number of issues so adult, so heart breaking, so complex and so utterly baffling, that even the most capable parents are struggling with explanations. Domestic abuse, sexual assault, the tragedy of the bushfires, the fear of unemployment ……they’re all concepts you try to quarantine from your kids for as long as possible in order to protect their innocence. But mass media saturation coverage has made that virtually impossible.

Kids see things on the news and in news promos during other shows. They hear things in the playground and on breakfast radio. They glance at the pictures on the front of the paper. And they have questions for you.

I’m never prepared for these conversations, even when I spontaneously initiate them myself like I did a couple of weeks ago. I was reading the paper and came across the leaked police photo of Rihanna’s bruised and battered face. Shocked and appalled, I turned to my 11-year-old son. [itals]“Do you have any Chris Brown music on your ipod?” [itals] I asked. Him: “Yes. Why?” Me: “Well, you should delete it.” Him:“Why?” Me:  “Because he beat up his girlfriend Rihanna and that’s a terrible thing. Allegedly.” Him: “What does allegedly mean?”

See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. Not only did I then have to explain why a man would want to (allegedly) attack someone far weaker than him and who he claims to love, I had to do it via a quick segue covering the basic principles of the legal system and the vagaries of innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

I’m not sure how I did with my explanation. Violence against women is an extremely difficult thing for anyone to understand, let alone translate to a tween, alleged or not.

I was certainly impassioned. But my speech may have run a little long because after a while I noticed he was reading the sports pages. Fantastic. Thanks to recent events in the NRL, that’s a whole other impossible conversation to prepare for.