Before my daughter was born, my husband explained that there were some conversations that he did not want to have with her so I needed to make sure I was present and prepared. You know which ones I’m talking about- PMS and the sex talk. I would laugh and promise that I’d be around for those sensitive and uncomfortable conversations.

But after today, I’d bet that my husband would prefer those conversations to the one he had with Lexi in the car. As they were listening to K-LOVE, which is a family friendly radio station, the broadcaster announced that it was “Human Trafficking Awareness Day.”

I don’t know about your children. Maybe they wouldn’t have paid any attention to the radio. Maybe they wouldn’t have even heard the part about human trafficking. But I know my child, and since she was a toddler, she has exhibited a tremendous level of empathy and compassion for others suffering and in pain-so much so that my husband and I worry that she’s too much of an “old soul.”

Because she’s an only child, we had no comparison. We always thought her thoughts and behaviors were typical, but we now know otherwise. When she was three, she saw a video at church featuring children living in poverty who experienced hunger on a daily basis. Her response was to forego food for three meals on the premise that if other children couldn’t eat, it wasn’t fair that she could. When we explained that her sacrificing food wouldn’t help the children in any way, Lexi asked to sponsor a child. So we did.

Later that year, I received a call from the director of her daycare, and she explained to me that Lexi’s teacher had died unexpectedly of a stroke at age 39. She had been there just the day before, and then she wasn’t. On the way to pick her up, I was rehearsing how I would explain this to her and help me understand how things like this could happen. When I entered the daycare, I saw teachers crying and children in distress because their teachers were crying. I found my daughter consoling the teachers. As I strapped her into her car seat, Lexi said, “Mommy, why are they crying? Don’t they know that Ms. Violet is in heaven with God and no longer hurting? They should be happy knowing she feels better and that she’s watching us from heaven. It’s not a sad day.” When she was four, she would come home agitated that a child had been bullied by another child in her class.

I just wanted to provide some context to why my husband was grieved today when my daughter asked, “What is human trafficking?” This child doesn’t take, “I don’t want to talk about it” or “I’ll tell you when you’re older” for answers. She won’t be ignored either. She recognizes that has an avoidance tactic and will persist. We try to respect her in that regard and not take her questions lightly so we tailor the content to what we think is appropriate for a five-year old with a heart ten times the size of her little body. So as gently as possible, he explained that human trafficking meant that people sold other people. According to my husband, her face was the image of pure shock as she tried to process that. “Why would people do that, Daddy?” Sweetheart, there are mean people who make bad choices.

And there’s the lesson I didn’t want her to learn yet. We teach her that she has the power to choose and make decisions throughout the day, and that it up to her to make good or bad choices. How do we explain to her that there are grown ups in this world that would choose evil over good and harm others?

Sometimes, knowledge is not power.