Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University, and Michnick Golinkoff’s co-author to the aforementioned article and a recent book, echoes this sentiment. “What goes in is what comes out.”

Trump is a fundamentally poor example. “What I’ve seen time and time again from him is a lack of respect for other humans, and a lack of building community . . . of having positive relationships with other people,” says Hirsh-Pasek. “If we tell our children that it’s not about that, then I think we’re giving the wrong message, and I think that we’re harming them for the future.”

Beyond this, Trump’s rhetoric traffics primarily in negatives, precisely the opposite of developmentally appropriate principles, which emphasize fostering positive and constructive solutions with kids. As any parent of a toddler will tell you, it is much easier for a child to reject with “no” than to learn to accommodate and say yes.

Moreover, Trump’s foundational device, as witnessed most vehemently in his and his supporters’ speeches at the Republican National Convention, is to foster fear. “He has our kids scared to death that the world is going to blow up tomorrow. And while the world isn’t in ideal shape, that’s just not true,” says Hirsh-Pasek, recalling the stress of her own Cold War childhood, replete with imminent Russian missile strikes and duck-and-cover drills. “And it’s not healthy.”

Anecdotally, I asked a number of parents how they approach responding, or helping their child respond, to witnessing Trump’s bloviation. Some have tried to underscore for their kids his incompatibility with American principals, and thus, his un-electability. Some point out his underlying demagogic principles, so that their kids will learn to recognize egotistical provocateurs. Some use him as an ideal counterexample for teaching empathy; an adult who completely lacks a moral compass. Some just try to skip past him and hope for a happier future. “I tell my daughter, one day Michelle Obama will be president, and everything will be O.K.,” an educator friend of mine joked.

Our experts insist that it is best not to ignore Trump. Rather, they suggest using his misbehavior as an opportunity for inquiry and problem solving. If you can’t help but turn off the TV or radio every time he comes on, ask your child why they think you’re doing that. If you can endure long enough for them to hear his inevitable despicable or outrageous comment, ask them how that makes them feel, how it might make others feel, and whether or not they think it’s appropriate. And be sure to ask why.

“You want the learning to come from the kid,” says Michnick Golinkoff. “If you just tell your child something, it may go in one ear and out the other. But if you ask the child to make the judgment, the child is going to be forced to think more. And when they think more, that lesson lasts more.”

Dr. Hirsh-Pasek has blunter advice. “I’ve often thought that the real way to deal with this whole campaign is to treat Trump like the bully that he is. And how do you deal with a bully? Ignore him when you can. Show him off as a bad example if there are times that you can’t ignore him. And recognize that we’re dealing with a two- or three-year-old who is having a tantrum pretty much all the time. And I, at least, don’t want a three-year-old who’s having a tantrum in charge of the nuclear weapons. I don’t want to hide under my desk anymore.”

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