Should I let my child watch the news after a tragedy?
After a tragedy, it's easy to get hooked on the horror when it's replayed over and over on TV, but watching can be upsetting for kids. In this video, Dr. Tamar Chansky, who specializes in anxiety, explains the ways that children are affected by ...
Transcript
Find out what your child already knows. You really want to start with their own starting point.
They may have heard something at school or from friends. They have questions. So you really want to start there. [MUSIC PLAYING]
When a tragedy occurs, parents wonder how they should tell their children about the situation.
Should they let them watch the news, for example? And this is a place where there's a strong message from mental health professionals
that the news is really not geared to children. So it's really not appropriate. That doesn't mean not talking to your child
about the tragedy that's happened. But there are so many different ways to do that. So we'll talk about that in a second.
But make sure that your child isn't in the doorway looking at the television over your shoulder
while you're watching because it's just going to create more confusion for them. They can't distinguish between the fact
that they're seeing a car crash or a plane crash or a hurricane and realizing-- they're going to think that it's happening in their life
that they're going to be next or it's happening all the time. So the visuals of the news are really overwhelming to kids.
But what can parents do when a tragedy occurs? First thing is, find out what your child already knows.
You really want to start with their own starting point. They may have heard something at school or from friends.
They have questions. So you really want to start there. Remember that you don't have to tell them everything.
You really want to gauge it to what your child can handle at that moment. You may come back another time and fill
in more pieces of the puzzle. But you really want to be concrete and simple in your message and just let them in very simple terms what
has happened. A plane crashed and many people died. Or there was a hurricane in another state
and some people lost their houses. But after you do that, what you want to do
is help your child know-- as soon as they hear that information, they're going to start feeling like, yikes, what do I need to do to protect, myself,
to protect my family? So you really want to make sure you tell your kids who is on the job of taking care of that.
So you take that off to do list. And say all the people who are helping whose job it
is every day to keep you safe-- when you talk about tragedy in the news,
you really want to focus on safety rather than on risk. So you want to reinforce who are the people who are
taking care of the situation. We're making sure it doesn't happen again. Kids just don't have a sense of that.
It may seem obvious to you. But go ahead and state the obvious. It'll be very reassuring to kids.
A final point is you want to make sure that you don't have your family life thrown--
your routines and your rituals thrown too much by an event like that. Kids as much as possible, do need routine.
It helps them to know that life is going to get back to normal. So if you need help with that from family members
or from neighbors to help a routine happen around dinner or bedtime, do get that help because your children will
really benefit from seeing that life can go back to normal routines. [AUDIO LOGO]
parenting
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