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Local Media

When there is a tragic event in the world media that you must explain to your child, parents will often comfort them by reminding them that it didn’t happen to them, it didn’t even happen in their area, it can’t happen to them, etc. This is a good way for parents to stop their child from worrying needlessly. For example, a child may see a hurricane on the news and the parent can remind them that they don’t live in an area where hurricanes are.

It is a lot more difficult to comfort a child, though, if something bad does happen in your area, and even more difficult if something bad happened to a child in your area. This can make it nearly impossible to keep your child from constantly being worried that the same thing could happen to them.

One way that some parents would prefer is to simply not let their child watch or hear the news, this way they won’t know of the bad things that happen around them. This could work except, if the child is in school, other children talk and it is very possible that your child may hear about it. In this case, they may often hear a distorted, much scarier version, too.

The following are some key points that parents should keep in mind when discussing tragic local events:

• Be honest—it is very important that you be as honest as possible, while still leaving out gory details, with your child about what happened. Not only should you be honest about what happened, you should also be honest with how it makes you and others feel. This will help to show your child that it is good to feel compassion for others in time of tragedy, as well as that it is simply okay to be sad.

• Explain Why—while you obviously won’t be able to explain away tragic events, you may be able to explain at least part of it. If there was a bus accident in your area, you can explain to your child what went wrong and why it happened. Knowing why something happened can make your child feel more in control of how to prevent it from happening to them.

• Talk about prevention—this is an important one. With the example above, your child would likely be scared to get on a bus after hearing about it. But, if you explain to your child how, since this happened, his school will be careful to prevent the same thing from happening (and explain exactly how—the brakes failed on that bus, and because that happened, his school checks the brakes every day, etc.). This may not ease your child’s mind completely, but knowing what he and others can do to prevent it from happening can make your child feel a little safer.

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