worries & fears

Tonight I had a long, cathartic talk with a good friend. We talked about Hurricane Katrina, the ongoing media coverage, and the governmental response. Our talk took a natural turn to surging gas and oil prices and uncertainties about the upcoming winter. We reasoned that similar discussions must be taking place in homes all over the country. Tonight, my friend was dealing with stress by cooking. I'm dealing with mine by writing.

In times like this, I worry more about kids. Many of us remember how September 11th and last January's tsunami, so far from New Hampshire yet as close as our TV screens, impacted our kids here. Now we have another disaster and in our own country again, a natural one this time - no terrorists to blame. Hurricane is part of our kids' vocabularies - seeing the televised aftermath of one has got to be worrisome. Add to that adults' growing preoccupations with oil and gasoline prices and, if New Hampshire kids aren't worried now, chances are they could be very soon. To that end, I post the following resources that may aid us adults in aiding our kids.

From the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) comes this article, Helping Young Children After a Disaster. It talks about how witnessing troubling events, even indirectly, can affect children and reminds us that kids can be very perceptive to adult fears and anxieties. It also offers strategies to help adults support kids and help them feel safe.

This next article is by Joanne Cantor, a leading expert on how media, particularly TV and movies, can adversely affect kids. Tsunami Coverage and Young Children's Fears was obviously written earlier this year but the information is applicable to the current situation. You can see by her style of writing how passionate Dr. Cantor is about her work - I heard her speak last year in Anaheim and she was very convincing.

The NYU Child Study Center has just posted Talking to Kids About World Natural Disasters. The article reminds us that certain children may be more sensitive than others to anxiety, worry, and stress. It has good information that you might want to pass on to parents in your newsletters home.

One more - Helping Children Handle Disaster-Related Anxiety tells us that children have few life experiences to help them put disasters into perspective. This site looks at preschool and grade school children as well as adolescents, outlining behaviors that can occur and suggesting ways to help reassure each age group.

We all know that much of a child's fear comes from imagined scenarios. Even so, imagined fear is still fear to a child and a child who feels afraid, is afraid. Here's hoping everyone's fears subside - and soon.