Posts Tagged ‘talking to children’

Raising Secure Children in a Scary World: Talking About Terror

Secure Children in an Insecure World | Marcy Axness, PhDThirteen years since 9/11.

Thirteen years ago last night, our daughter Eve — then ten years old — was so excited that the next morning she was going to wake up by herself for the very first time, using the radio alarm clock we had given her for the occasion. She chose the station carefully (classical was it? maybe soft pop?), but when the radio clicked on at six a.m. in her Los Angeles bedroom it wasn’t music that woke her up. The second plane had just hit its target. Nobody yet had clarity on what was happening, let alone the news media. A fragmented noise skein of unfathomable facts, disbelief, sorrow, and fear came out of the radio that morning.

Eve’s experience is a bit of a metaphor for what we all went through: we woke up that day to a very different world than was familiar, and we didn’t have a mental framework for it, let alone words. In a further topsy-turvy turnabout of how things would have normally been, it was she who first alerted us to the fact that something very big and very bad had happened. {Read more at mothering.com}

Image:
slgckgc (Flickr / Creative Commons license)

Talking to Children About Tragic Events: The Help of Temperaments

Talking to children about tragic eventsWhen talking to children about tragic events, understanding individual temperament can be a great help. In my earlier 9/11 post, I focused mainly on two important aspects for the parent:

  • the fundamental need for some measure of self-possession and calm amidst outer events
  • a level of honesty and clarity in speaking to the child about the events that is not the norm in our culture

Especially related to that second point — honesty and clarity for the child — I want to dive a bit deeper and look at the importance of knowing your individual child, and letting that understanding guide you with more specificity and nuance when navigating the delicate territory of tragedy with them. {Read the rest of this post at mothering.com}

Image by:
obbino (Flickr / Creative Commons)