‘Mr. Trump, please be nice,’ kids request in letters
In the aftermath of a vicious election, children are writing letters to President-elect Donald Trump imploring him to adopt the values they learned about in elementary school: kindness and compassion.
Molly Spence Sahebjami, a mother from Seattle, asked other parents of young children to write letters addressed to Trump Tower in New York about the importance of “being kind to other people, even if they’re different than you are.”
She launched a Facebook called “Dear President Trump: Letters from Kids About Kindness,” in which she asked if any other kids would like to write letters — that are kind in tone and nonpartisan — about how the issue affects the children personally. The parents were encouraged to share photos of the letter on social media with #kidsletterstotrump. They came pouring in.
“These kids may not have known much about manufacturing jobs, and NAFTA, and wars, and the other reasons being explained as to why Trump won,” Sahebjami told Yahoo News. “But they did know they heard Trump say really unkind things about many people — about people in wheelchairs, about women, about overweight people, about brown-skinned people from other countries.”
She said she had Republican friends and family who were also disturbed by Trump’s remarks that were “unkind at a basic, human level.”
“So the idea sprouted to help these kids deal with concern by doing something very American, and positive and productive: writing letters to the president-elect,” she said.
It all started when her 5-year-old son Calvin expressed disappointment that “the mean man” won. She suggested that he could write Trump a letter to help him be kinder.
Sahebjami said she did not include Calvin’s letter on the Facebook page because she did not want the focus to be on them her family. She described the project as a nonpartisan, global grassroots campaign.
The campaign quickly went viral and was featured in the Washington Post, the Seattle Times and other news sites.
Sahebjami told Yahoo News that she thinks it’s caught so much attention because it stands in stark contrast to the unkindness and division that’s been seen on both sides of the aisle this past week.
“It’s a call for positive, American action — to call on our new president-elect of our great country to be kind and show respect. We all need to be more kind and show more respect,” she wrote.
Here’s what some of the children are saying to Trump:
“Dear Mr. President Trump, I would first like to ask that you be nice to everyone, whatever color, race and creed. I got to a Montessori school, where we learn it is very important to respect and be kind to everyone,” wrote Helena, an 8th grader from Chicago. She said that the U.S. “would be great” if the president is kind to everyone.
Hadley, 13, wrote that she hopes Trump can defy her expectations and prove his critics wrong: “I hope you can help everyone of every race, not just white men with the same beliefs. I hope that you will maintain everyone’s rights, and give more rights equally. The country is counting on you.”
A little boy made a special request that Trump be nice to people from other countries and to people who are gay, like his moms.
“Mr. Trump please be nice to people who have dark skin and people who are immigrants,” wrote one little girl, whose mother said she had nightmares all last week.
Annie, 9, said she thinks blocking people from other races isn’t a good decision — an apparent reference to Trump’s hardline immigration policies — and that she goes to a school where at least 65 percent of the students are not white: “Some of my best friends are Mexican and African- American, and I am a white girl.”
