Children Processing Scary News

Adults need to be more responsible about how they discuss the news with children. It is bad enough to see how different stories are sensationalized over the airwaves. The motive behind this, as I see it, is to drive up viewer interest and keep the ratings up. But the result can often be a "Chicken Little" scenario where it seems that disaster is imminent all around.

I remember hearing the story a couple of years ago about how children in Britain were having difficulty sleeping at night over worries about impending doom over global warning. And from where were they getting this input? From teachers at their schools!

A few days ago, my piano teacher was greeted with tears by one of her students, a little boy. Why was he crying? Because he was certain that he would catch the swine flu and die from it! I don't know where he got those notions from or whether his child's mind derived its own conclusions after seeing news on TV.

The above two examples point to two different problems that adults need to remedy regarding how to present news to children. The global warming example shows that possibly frightening news needs to be given in a very careful manner, without the doomsday trappings common in the mass media. And the swine flu example points to the need for parents and teachers to understand that it may be necessary to tell some of the bad news to their children or students in order to make sure, in case those children had heard about the bad news from the media or perhaps other children secondhand, that they are able to process the information without suffering trauma or panic.

It can sometimes be difficult, as adults, to remember how it was to be a little child. Children have to take life as it comes and do not have the convenience of a lifetime of accumulated knowledge and learning to filter through the news. They are also very emotionally and physically dependent on adults for their well-being. If adults who are responsible for the care of children come across potentially traumatic news, they should try to make sure that those children can process the news with the assurance that they will be protected. Even if the adults don't believe it themselves! Children are not little adults; they need to be nurtured and respected in a compassionate manner according to their immature level of development.