Father comforts son after Paris attacks; explains how flowers beat guns

“It is important to explain to children what is happening”, Cléa Molette posted.

“They did it because they’re very, very, very bad”, said the boy, perched stiff with fright on his father’s knee in a video that has now gone viral.

“But there’s bad guys, dad”, Brandon, who is in preschool, replies. “They’re my heros. I feel better too now!”, he says.

The terror and carnage that struck France last week was terrifying for everyone, but even more so for the young children who don’t quite understand what happened. He replies he does, and that the perpetrators were very “mean. Look, everyone is putting flowers”, the father says, gesturing toward memorials on the streets.

Angel Le tried to reassure his son that they were not moving houses because “France is our home” as the camera continued rolling to seize the poignant moment between father and son.

Angel Le and his son Brandon were speaking to Le Petit Journal.

The reporter asks Brandon if he knows why the city was attacked on Friday.

Father: It’s to fight against the guns.

Boy’s father: “Oh no… don’t worry”.

Reporter: “So are you feeling better?”

The video is from Le Petit Journal, a French news site but Jerome Isaac Rousseau took the liberty of adding English subtitles to it so the rest of us could understand.

The father and son are being interviewed at a memorial for the victims at the Bataclan concert hall a day after the attacks, where the community had brought candles and flowers in their honor. “My son asked me a very hard question to answer, so I just said the first words that came into my head and what I saw was the flowers and candles”, he says. If you can scroll past it without needing a minute, you are harder-hearted than I am.