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Kids and Thunderstorms:

Many kids are scared of thunderstorms, which is understandable. Thunderstorms can be scary things, even for adults. Lightning is kind of scary-looking, especially when it strikes nearby and lights up the entire sky, or when it hits a tree and makes loud noises. Thunder is loud and surprising, and wind, hail and hard rain are all things that make scary noises. The electricity sometimes goes out, causing the child to have to endure nothing but darkness surrounded by loud scary noises. So, it is completely understandable why a child's first instinct is fear. But, what many parents don't think about, or simply don't realize, is that unless your child is severely terrified of storms, there are ways of convincing your child that thunderstorms aren't all that bad. Even if you are nervous during thunderstorms, you can still manage to help your kids not be as scared, and having to be brave for them can actually help an adult not be as afraid. Use the following tips to help your kids learn to like (or at least to not despise) thunderstorms:

• Practice—telling your child that rain is the best weather to sleep in can help them not be nervous, and you can even buy a CD with rain and thunderstorm noises to show them. If they hear the thunderstorm on the CD, but they know that it's not a real storm, they won't be as scared. They will see that it is just noises, and if you can play this CD for them to fall asleep to, it will help them sleep when real thunderstorms are around.

• Tell them lightning is beautiful—show them pictures of lightning, and tell them how beautiful it is. Kids tend to follow their parent's lead, so if you tell them how pretty it is and make a big deal about how it lights up the sky (in a good way), they will possibly learn to like it, too.

• Let them see the storm—but not if it is a dangerous or really scary one. If there is lightning thunder, you can let them look out the window and watch it. If a child is able to see a storm, instead of just hearing it, they can see that it isn't harmful, it's just loud.

• Block your child from the bad—do not let your child watch scary shows that involve bad storms, such as true storm story shows. Don't let them see the news about tornado damage and how many people were killed, etc. When your child is old enough to handle this type of information, and to understand some of the science behind storms, you can introduce this to him. But, if you let a three year old watch the news and they see houses torn down and cars in trees due to bad weather, you are going to have a hard time convincing them that the storm outside their window is any different.

Doing these things obviously will not work with all children (especially those children who have experienced a devastating storm firsthand), but if you always stay calm during storms and try to make them seem interesting instead of scary, your child might not have as much fear of them.

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