Should You Tell Your Child or Children That Their Father Is In Prison?

I don't know how but for some reason I come up with the craziest questions for myself.  I was thinking about the ratio of black fathers oppose to white fathers that are incarcerated.  The crazy part is that statistics says that blacks make up 50 percent of U.S. prison population. Blacks are currently 12 percent of U.S. population. Blacks commit 9 times the crimes of whites. (900%)  Could you imagine how many of these men are fathers?  Exactly, you don't even want to.  But, what do we tell our children if they so happen to be the child of one of these fathers?  I told you guys when I decided to write this blog there were no off-limits.  This meaning that I would share all of me.  That includes the dark and ugly places that I hate to revisit.  But, maybe this could be healing to someone else.  My children's father was incarcerated when my oldest boy was 2yrs old.  At the time, he probably was too young to understand the circumstances around him.  Anyway, when he asked about where his daddy was I would always say college.  I know some of you probably would've settled for "Hood Vacation"  Anyway, he was imprisoned for 2 years of Malik's life.  I swear this had to be one of the roughest times in my life.  Some of you know how it goes, homies don't stop by to bring money, phone calls aren't returned and doing it all from the muscle because we're mothers and this is what we do.  My son use to cry his little heart out when it was time for visits to end.  One day, we were leaving and Malik was screaming outside the prison "I want to go back to my Daddy's House!"  Two older white women walked by and complimented on how cute he was.. One even went as far to say "Ahh, that's so cute he wants his daddy.  Sweetheart, you better hurry so that you can take him to his Daddy's house."  All of the sudden I burst out laughing and of course they were looking at me like I had 10 heads.  I said  "Ladies, this is his Daddy's house"  Yup, speechless they were.  But, last year I had the same look as them when Malik and I were talking and he said this "Mom, I remember when my dad was in jail (pause) I mean school and they had those Sesame Street Characters on the wall"  I said "Malik you knew that wasn't school?"  He said "Yes, mom I didn't think that you knew"  That is so crazy.  I say this to say stop telling these damn kids their daddy in college.  Trust and Believe that they are alot smarter than we give them credit for.  Thank you so much for reading my blog and may you be blessed abundantly.  Peace.