Educate when talking to children about tragic events

Tragic events, like the recent Col­orado movie the­ater shoot­ing, can leave chil­dren scared and con­fused. Chil­dren will look to the adults in their lives for guid­ance and com­fort. Chil­dren need to be reminded that most peo­ple are good and would never want to hurt them, but there are some who do want to hurt oth­ers. It is impor­tant to remem­ber to edu­cate chil­dren and not scare them when talk­ing about tragic events. Some fear it is all right because a small amount of fear will remind chil­dren to be cau­tious with­out being paranoid.

Par­ents should make time to talk to their chil­dren about an event and not allow their chil­dren to rely on the news media as their only source of infor­ma­tion. Par­ents should pro­vide the facts of the event and not allow their chil­dren to be exposed to news sto­ries that elab­o­rate on the fright­en­ing expe­ri­ences of vic­tim sur­vivors and the opin­ions of so called “experts” who spec­u­late and embell­ish on the facts. Par­ents should also teach their kids how to respond if they are ever present dur­ing a tragic event.

The next time you take your fam­ily to din­ner at a restau­rant, have your kids point out all the exits and the quick­est way to get to each of those exits. Then prac­tice a “when-then” sit­u­a­tion instead of a “what-if” sit­u­a­tion. Ask your child what he or she would do when an emer­gency hap­pens and not what if an emer­gency hap­pens. Empha­size that escape is always the best option dur­ing any emer­gency and they should leave the area as quickly as pos­si­ble when­ever it is safe to do so. If escap­ing safely is not pos­si­ble, they should con­sider bar­ri­cad­ing them­selves in a room away from the sit­u­a­tion. They should lock the door and pile fur­ni­ture and other items against the door to make it more dif­fi­cult for any­one to get the door open. As a last resort, if face to face with some­one who wants to hurt them, they should try to inca­pac­i­tate the per­son by aggres­sively throw­ing items directly at the per­son or attack­ing the per­son and then escap­ing when safe.

Let your chil­dren know it is nat­ural and OK to feel scared and upset dur­ing and after an event. Ensure them there are peo­ple trained to han­dle emer­gency sit­u­a­tions who are work­ing to pre­vent fur­ther tragedies from occur­ring. Tell them they, too, can help pre­vent fur­ther tragedies by prac­tic­ing how to respond dur­ing an event and let’s keep our kids safe.

Keep­ing Our Kids Safe is brought to you by the Delaware Police Depart­ment and School Resource Offi­cer Rod Glazer.

Posted by Rod Glazer on Aug 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.